#ok but back on the names like the first 2 ones were given original names and by kid 27 they started the 'jadekat jr' shit

[rg11]

Can we see more of Jadekat and their 612 babies...do they have any names besides Jadekat jr jr jr

i dont think theyre that creative to come up with any other names for their kids

though the image is inaccurate! its actually 613 kids (due to the one karkats holding in the photo) that ones name is jadekat jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr jr

[local-diavolo-anon]

i'm back!

ok so 2/3 days ago i found this youtube video where op turned Springtrap (or well, William Afton) into a fully build DnD character, and if i say so myself: things got out of hand fast

so here is my take on DnD Springtrap and specifically on that build (adding more infos under the cut for who is interested, i suggest to watch the video first)

starting with saying that unless you're playing in a scifi setting, this build is either not for you or to be modified, since in later levels spells are heavily centered around technomagic and electronic devices; personally when i will play him i will probably tinker around with the chosen spells and cantrips to make him less violently niche and/or more versatile

which kinda saddens me because it takes away not little of the characterization but, given most dnd stories take place in a medieval fantasy or high fantasy setting, a cantrip like On/Off or a spell like Remote Access are NOT particularly useful; so i will go for more psychic damage or necromancy oriented abilities, maybe i might take more than just 4 levels in artificier as well (especially given that again, all of those warlock spells at later levels are all technology oriented) but i need to see what those offer

however it is a kinda tank-y build given that with a shield on you can get up to a 27 of Ac, so even with low damage and not much hp you would not struggle too much to stay alive, and i like that!

as for the character himself, i put too much effort into my interpretation not to share it, so if anyone wants to play this guy as well, i fabricated a possible backstory that might come useful:

The character goes by the name "Dave Miller" (or whatever variant you want to use), and was originally a human artificier who created constructs for a living, mainly with the goal of offering aid to who needed it for whatever reason.

After losing part of his family to some kind of accident he became terrified of death, so with age he started replacing his own body parts with machinery to delay his last days (which made him a cyborg), until the point where he was very very close to become just a robot.

There however he ran into an issue, that being that a robot need a power source, and his own heart and lungs could not sustain a whole robot by themselves.

Through particular and very much not illegal experiments tied to necromancy he discovered that the life force of a living being could be shared, and used as a form of fuel. (possibly: age lived of the creature used= amount of extra months you get)

Here comes the second problem: this only worked with intelligent creatures, and more specifically, it worked best with creatures of your own race, which meant that he either went around murdering people or he found another solution. Non same-race creatures worked as well but not as good and there were not easy to find in the middle of a city and with a shop tied to your name.

And here is where and WHY he'd join a party of adventurers: after some time, his reserves or fuel were running VERY thin, and running into a group of adventurers was a god sent because by joining their party he essentially got a free pass to kill whoever he wanted, and reduce them to a dried raisin after sucking some life force out of them. Doing so you learn that the mowe powerful the creature is, the more energy it produces as well.

Your goal, that you as the player are following, when role-ing your character? essentially slay whatever powerful BBEG your Dm throws at you and suck all of that juicy fuel out of them, so that you can return to your little shop in the middle of the capital and return to create and sell whatever weird construct, doll, or robot comes to your mind for another few decades undisturbed.

And this is it. I think this might be a good backstory that could fit pretty much any setting you want to play this guy into, be it classic dnd or some scifi futuristic thing.

of course you don't NEED to use this one line per line, make up your own without looking back if you don't like it lol, dnd is the "make up shit and have fun" game after all!

Edit: also no his outfit makes no sense, i just went with vibes and decided a tanktop dress shirt, a twin tailed gilet and suspenders OVER said gilet was a good choice.

[approximateknowledge]

Oh yeah I'd love to hear what you have to say about Kirito and Kuroyukihime

*cracks knuckles*

ok so kuroyukihime's *backstory* has been a hotly debated mess since day one, right? and for a long time people assumed she was kirito and asuna's daughter

except this became less and less likely as the story went on, and then *volume 23* came out

which is where we learn this:

*OH*

she's artificial

she's an experiment

and crucially her mind is in fact, an artificial soul that got overwritten onto the brain of the artificially grown baby (who for some reason got the same birth(?)day as asuna, which also seems to be relevant)

ok so we have a character who's kinda similar to kirito personality-wise, and whose combat avatar is like the platonic ideal of a dual-wielder. she *is* the blades when she's fighting, and the moves she uses literally have the same names as the sao techniques used by kirito (including some exclusive dual-wielding ones). note that the sao incident is mostly classified and also happened over 2 decades ago at this point

now let's go even further back: the alicization arc;

-it *starts* with kirito's second childhood in rulid, in the underworld. the entire premise hinges on the fact that *souls can in fact be reverted back in age and memories can be sealed away*

-it *ends* with kirito erasing all their memories from the 200 accelerated years they were stuck in the underworld, except no, *the star king fluctlight copy of their soul still exists*; and it still exists up to the latest volume of sao but nobody knows where it went

so let's add all of that up shall we!

we have here a character who had her brain overwritten by an artificial fluctlight of unknown origin at birth, with the caveat that fluctlights can be age-reverted and memory-sealed (basic necessity otherwise the alicization arc couldn't have happened, the tech is canonically not only present but over a decade old at kuroyukihime's birth), all the while a certain fluctlight copy of kirito is missing, and it's just the specific one who happens to have 2 subjective centuries of experience with both acceleration and incarnation

also add to this that the name "kuroyuki"(<hime is a title) and the name "kirito" have the *exact* same relation to the respective character's legal names

kuroba sayuki vs kirigaya kazuto; literally just the first kanji of the family name and the last kanji of the given name, they both thought of this independently

so yeah, kuroyukihime is a fluctlight copy of star king and im not kidding

(her avatar is called black lotus btw. you know, really hammering in the reincarnation theme)

^that's a kirito-isotope

it all adds up

this is a genuine theory, im not doing a bit

[gabzilla-z]

ok quick thoughts, spoilers behind the cut.

Pros:

Halle. HALLE. H a l l e. Her voice, her face, her mannerisms. They took what made Ariel special in the animated movie and built on it and she was the perfect person to pull it off.

Her beauty was distracting.

So glad they finally got a singer for a live action, I couldn’t take another B&B autotuned disaster.

Made me want to get to the nearest rock and play mermaid ngl.

I had my doubts with Jonah but he did a great job with Eric, played the shy, kinda awkward potato prince charming to perfection. Loved that they expanded his backstory and his interest in adventure and the sea. Also A+ for the movie knowing he had a white shirt on while surrounded by water and using every chance it had to drench him.

Eric still being caring and worried about Ariel even under Ursula’s spell? 10/10 no notes.

He came to chew bubblegum and be dreamy and he was all out of bubblegum.

Halle and Jonah’s chemistry was insane, I need them to do ten movies making eyes at each other.

Seriously the movie could have been 2 hours of them interacting in that library and it would have been money well spent.

or just two hours of them being cute smol and tol in a boat idc

TRUE LOVE INDEED

Can’t wait for this movie to be out in D+ so I can reblog all the gifs.

Part of Your World and all reprises were ofc gorgeous. Vanessa’s Trick is haunting and exactly what one would want for a siren song. For the First Time is gorgeous and underrated, felt very Broadway-esque. Eric’s song was corny but in a good way.

The rest of the songs are adequate but are not as good as the original ones.

Gotta said, song aside, the Kiss the Girl scene was more endearing in this version. When she helps him figure out her name?

Melissa was good as Ursula and made the character her own, though I think she was not as scary as she could have been. Better than I expected, though.

The actress that plays Vanessa knew she had 5 minutes to make an impression and used them to the fullest. Delightful.

Cons:

The CGI felt unfinished and so did the color grading/lighting. I edited all the movie images in this post (just played with the saturation and the contrast) and I’m mediocre at best. HIRE TUMBLR EDITORS, DISNEY.

Halle deserved to wear more outfits, I can't believe Disney missed an opportunity to sell more dolls. Would have given her a dress for each day on land and the water dress. Mouse, I thought you liked money.

we could have had it all

Wanted more of her sisters tbh. And less Triton, Javier phoned it in imo. I know Triton and Ariel’s relationship is an important part of the original movie but idk if it was his half assed acting or me wanting more of the sisters, but I wasn’t moved.

Flounder's weird character design was saved by his stellar voice actor and Sebastian grew on me, he was hilarious. Scuttlefina was tolerable but gosh she’s always playing the same character, stop casting her in everything.

Less I say about Scuttlebutt the better. Kids are probably gonna love it, though.

The ending was kinda weird? It felt rushed and the battle with Ursula was disappointing. Which is a surprise because the OTHER stormy scene at night was wonderfully done. 

Up to Ursula taking Ariel back to the ocean it felt really cohesive but the second Triton appears to save her it was like they were trying to speed things up and it got... weird.

Didn’t mind Ariel being the one that killed Ursula, after everything she put her through.

Cannot believe the movie robbed us of Jonah screaming “I lost her once, I’m not gonna lose her again!”

Overall it was a well paced (up to the finale), entertaining, charming movie. Despite its faults, the only Disney live action I want to rewatch (outside MAYBE Cinderella).

8/10 Justice for the foam dress.

[generallemarc]

The Amazing Digital Circus analysis that none of you wanted, part 2

Jax is the best character so far. I was originally only here for Caine, since I watched Alex Rochon all the way back when he was the Autarch of Flame in the good ol' days of youtube Top 10 channels, but every line Jax has makes me grin.

You go Kinger. Never stop being you.

I feel like that croc doing poses is a reference to something, but if it is I don't get it

Ok, why tf did they have Jax's head stay in a static position while everything else was jostling around? Is he like a chicken?

Okay, the glitches are gonna be a thing. Neat.

This is the last comparison I ever expected to be making, but the vibe I'm getting from the "computerized creation seeing its own world for what it is" thing they seem to be doing with the croc reminds me of Tad Williams's Otherland. You probably know it as the MMO with zero players that Josh Strife Hayes played through, but it's a damn good read and surprisingly relevant to ADC given the potential similarity with emerging digital consciousnesses.

"I can't even remember her face. Did she ever have a face?" And now we're going straight into the one truly terrifying ending to the Stanley Parable. I actually like the fast pace here-there's obviously gonna be other adventures, and this is laying the groundwork for how the Amazing Digital World(name not final) works, but how it really works and not some facade that'd get shattered halfway through the season.

Damn, I care way more about this literal nameless npc than I expected to. The first thing he does when he realizes the scale of what's going on is demand the truth of who he is. With how horrifying the truth has been so far, that takes guts.

I now see where they're going with Jax. He treats everything like a game likely as a means of coping and staying mentally stable enough to avoid abstraction, so he's going to have an active interest in not believing Pomni when she tries to tell everyone that these are sentient beings and not just npcs. He'll need her to be wrong to avoid a massive amount of retroactive guilt, so that's what he'll believe.

Ok, but why teapots? Is that an Alice reference?

Yay, they killed the monster! They accomplished something actually beneficial instead of the pointless murder they were sent for!

...I should really wait to see whether characters are dead before thinking they are.

And there go all the "Caine is trying to help them escape" theories. He knows they're sentient-he just doesn't care. There is no way he's missed it with that kind of reaction.

Yeah, so that was...fuckin' dark. And with a disturbingly realistic reaction from Pomni too. Tl:dr-Caine is evil. Do not trust Caine. And also Zooble was there I think.

[mordremstaff]

🧸💋🐾💢 for Miss Lusine, 🔪🍑⚙️💢 for Mister Atreus 🤲❤️

Lusine - my girl the light of my life my Mists Wars princess

🧸 - Childhood friends 💋 - First kiss 🐾 - Pets 💢 - Person they can't stand Atreus - he's a bit undercooked rn bc I'm saving him for whenever (if ever) anet does a charr expansion but here's some basic info for him

🔪 - Enemy/nemesis 🍑 - Notable flings ⚙️ - Coworkers/boss (krewe/other charr outside of warband) 💢 - Person they can't stand

Lusine - Basic character concept is that she's a Keep Lord who escaped the Mist Wars and she has no memory of her life before the Mist Wars. She remembers bits and pieces of the Mist Wars but it's all sort of a haze for her, given she's been killed and reincarnated so many times. She's technically a revenant and her magic invokes the Mist forces that mantained the borderlands she was stationed. Originally, I was calling this the Fogmother but now I'm debating renaming it to the Mists Tides/something adjacent to that given Anet used Mists Tides in the new map.

She doesn't remember her childhood/saplinghood but she does remember her bestest friend/lover Philomena. They were sylvari valiants who ventured into the Mist Wars together due to Philomena's wyld hunt. They were each other's darlings and confidants and lovers, and they both adored each other. Philomena was the much stronger and scarier of the two, better at fighting and entirely devoted to her Wyld Hunt. She led a handful of other valiants and squires who were also tangled up in the Mist Wars.

2. Heeheehoohoo her first kiss was with Philomena. She doesn't remember her first first kiss, but the first kiss she remembers is also the last kiss she had with Philomena. Philomena, Lusine, and their entire unit were stationed in the Mist Wars for too long and they were all forgetting themselves. Philomena was slowly turning into the keep lord. One day, Philomena was possessed by the urge to simply leave their encampment in the borderlands. Lusine tried to get her to stay and Philomena simply turned, kissed her, said goodbye, and left. Philomena never remembered her after that, and in time Lusine forgot about Philomena too beyond the concept that she knows Philomena existed and they were lovers. They became keep lords in separate keeps. An aside here is that Lusine and her story are themed after the Greek underworld so Lusine's and Philomena's original (pre-Mist Wars) names are all rivers in the Underworld and their keeps essentially guard the land of death. This is all just set dressing/for the vibes but I like the aesthetic.

3. She has a black mare kirin named Ekaterina, who she loves very much. Ekaterina is a clever but very well-mannered kirin who mostly likes to go for long runs through the woods and loves the beach. She plays in the ocean a lot and Lusine spends long hours on the coastline with her just running through the surf and watching seals together.

4. Lusine's generally polite and not bothered by people, but she's SOOOOO bothered by @grimriddles' Erebus. She thinks Erebus is rude, brutish, and only knows how to operate as the Legions would operate. She thinks he's terrible at leading, terrible at getting people to work with him, and overall doomed to die alone fighting against something he cannot win against. She still feels really bad for him though. Erebus has the beaten dog sort of energy that she pities a lot, and she knows he's been through hell and high water. At times, she desperately wants to help him but then they get into an argument and she's like FINE!! Just die!!!! See if I care!!! And she storms off and sulks for a few hours and then comes back like >:( Ok what do you need. She recognizes the fact Erebus is like many traumatized soldiers who never learned how to navigate social situations outside the military, and on top of that has been hurt so much he's never really developed the ability to communicate any of his pain or upset or anger in a way that doesn't lead to her frustration. She's still bothered by him though, as much as she pities him and cares in her own way.

Atreus - High ranking Blood Legion centurion who heads a unit of military police. Technically part of the Blood Legion spec ops and he's in charge of internal review/investigations. He's made to be a villain, and he was very loyal to Bangar before the civil war. He didn't flip sides to the Dominion though as he was afflicted with both 1) inertia and 2) adherence to a system that he knows and is frightened to move away from. That being said, he's no die-hard loyalist to Crecia and isn't entirely on board with changes in Blood Legion. Very "it worked the old way the new way is just for weaklings and people who couldn't succeed in the past." He's shady af as he's done a ton of cover ups for spec ops and Blood Legion in the past but he only does so within the military culture and system that's been built.

He doesn't have like a specific enemy/nemesis right now. I feel like maybe the one secretary in another unit that refuses to file his paperwork on time? The legal team that keeps spending forever on contracts and it takes 1083501830835085 rounds of letters for anything to move through? The one barista who REFUSES to give him enough ice in his iced coffee. One ice cube?? Just ONE?? Expect this answer to change in the future once I rp him more. He just doesn't have a reason to obsessively hate someone right now but I love an enemy/nemesis situation so it's gonna happen. Eventually.

2. He uh. Had a rly intense fling with a higher ranking officer when he was young and a huge bastard. The officer basically raised him to be as intense and deadly and frightening as he is right now, and really cultivated his extreme loyalty to Bangar. He was already really loyal because his parents were really high-ranking Blood Legion spec ops soldiers, so he was from the sort of pedigree that meant he was expected to serve just as well if not better than his parents did. The officer basically saw a bastard who had a lot of potential and a lot to prove and was like I could make this worse, which leads to how Atreus is today.

3. He's a centurion, so he's got a lot of coworkers and whatever higher ranking centurions, tribunes, and so on are above him. His warband is the Quill warband, given he's basically a desk jockey nowadays. Not a lot to say about his coworkers. They do their jobs and do as told. Behind his persona of a desk jockey, there lies a sinister and very politically savvy mind that likes to use paperwork and gaming the system to pull the strings he needs or wants.

4. I haven't rp'd him enough for him to develop a singular sort of hatred. In general though, he's got a hatred for gladia and anyone who wants to change the Blood Legion system. His mindset on it is basically the Blood Legion and all the legions are built off the backs of the soldiers underneath. If you don't have strong soldiers, you have a weak legion. So the gladia either learn to serve or they need to go, and any change to the system will introduce weakness that will make Blood Legion topple.

[creeky-cricket]

ok, so the orange side...

so, I've been seeing quite a bit of discussion on the topic of what the orange side could represent/what their name will be. so I thought I'd share my thoughts. personally, I feel as if the orange side would represent anger. or, more specifically rage. most of the encounters we've ever had with the side have been related to some standard or linked back to the thought of anger. Some examples of this would be, obviously when logan lost his cool while trying to explain to Remus why he felt as if his actions were unfair and then shouted. then later on when Logan became frustrated and Remus tried to push saying 'It kinda makes you wanna scream, huh.' I have also seen quite a few theories saying that this new side could represent repressed thoughts, while this is a good theory, I don't think so. if it was, then they would have appeared in the episodes with Patton talking about his repressed thoughts and also in dealing with intrusive thoughts when they got onto the topic of repression. now onto the name. as we can see, there are a lot of patterns with the names given to the sides. one of the first being the fact that all of the names have only two syllables. the second being that, both Janus and Remus' names are of Greek origins Janus' meaning two faces or doorways and Remus' literally means twin. and the last pattern with the names of the characters is the endings, (log-an, rom-an, patt-on. and rem-us and jan-us) Virgil being the outlier of this because as Thomas had depicted before he's like a grey side, sitting in the middle of the black and the white me and my friend actually discussed this a while ago, trying to keep all of these patterns in mind, two of the most likely ones that we found were either Marius/Marcus or Sirius. Marius as a name means dedicated to Mars, the Roman god of war, while it's not a Greek name, the definition goes along with the idea that the orange side is supposed to depict rage. Also, to be shortened down could go to Marcus, which means the same thing only with two syllables going along with the first pattern. and obviously, Marius ends with the same syllables as Remus and Janus. The second name, Sirius is another good option in my opinion. the definition of Sirius as a name is burning/glowing which also contributes to the idea of anger or rage. 'burning rage' etc. the origins of the name Sirius are also Greek, meaning that it would go along with the other dark sides along with eh fact it ends with '-us'. (also doesn't support anything at all I just think it would be cool cause Sirius is actually a star and it would be funny that he'd be related to Logan a lot.) the only thing wrong with this name is that it has three syllables instead of 2.

[girlinlotsoffandoms]

day nine - survivor’s guilt

notes: here's day nine! sorry its up so late but the upside, you'll get 2 stories in the same day pretty much.

read on AO3 or below

“Hello?”

A familiar voice flitted through the speaker, instantly energizing everyone in the room. “Stella.”

“Oh my God, Kelly?!” Stella grabbed her phone and pulled it closer. “Wha…but…the plane—the plane crashed. Your plane….what?!”

“I wasn’t on it. I’m OK.”

The emotion in his voice told them he was the exact opposite.

“The airline called, they told us your boarding pass had been scanned!” Stella couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Brett rubbed her back comfortingly and Stella took a breath, knowing she was getting worked up. “God, Kelly, we thought you were dead. What the hell happened?”

A sigh came from over the line and everyone could hear the shudder Kelly tried to hide. “I uh, I was on the plane at first. I made it all the way to my seat… but turns out the airline double booked a few seats including mine. The guy who also had my seat, his name was Bryan—his  wife had gone into labor with their first kid and he was trying to get home before the baby was born. So I gave him the seat.” 

“They managed to get me on a different flight that left about half an hour later so it didn’t seem like a big deal. We didn’t even know about the crash and then all of a sudden, our flight was being grounded in St. Louis. I guess American Airlines is grounding certain flights until the cause of the crash is determined. They’re trying to get everyone on different flights but there’s no telling how long that will take.”

“You weren’t on the plane,” Stella said quietly, sighing in relief. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t think any of us are okay right now, Stell.”

“Right, I know,” Stella said, sniffling. “I just…. god Kelly.”

“I know.”

Stella was crying again but this time, the tears streaming down her face were tears of relief. Stella was too emotional to keep talking but no one was ready for Kelly to hang up.

“Kelly, it’s good to hear your voice again,” Boden said. “Now is there anything we can do to help you?”

“Thanks, Chief.” Kelly paused and there was a commotion on his end of the phone. “I have to go. Make sure Stella’s okay for me until I get back?”

“You’ve got it Kelly,”

… … …

Three hours later, Kelly Severide was finally back in Chicago. The flight was easy but after the day’s events, tensions were running high for staff and passengers.

It had been the longest day of Kelly’s life. His brain wanted nothing more than to go home and sit in silence, away from everyone else, but his body and his heart wanted nothing more than to hug his wife.

Getting an Uber was next to impossible, the line wrapped through the arrivals area. Thankfully, one of the guys who sat in Kelly’s row offered him a ride and Kelly jumped at the chance.

If he got a strange look for asking to be dropped off at a firehouse, he didn’t care.

Kelly had texted Stella on the ride over, making sure she was still awake. Even though she’d said she was, he wasn’t expecting her and the rest of the crew to be waiting for him on the apron when the car pulled up to Firehouse 51.

He had barely made it out of the car before Stella had rushed to him and wrapped him in the tightest hug she could manage. It was a hug Kelly returned just as fiercely.

After a day of unimaginable loss and trauma, Kelly and Stella could both finally take a breath.

… … …

The days following the plane crash were rough. Stella was dealing with the trauma of thinking Kelly was dead by not letting her husband out of her sight and Kelly? Well, he wasn’t really dealing with it.

As more details came out about the crash, the more withdrawn Kelly became. The list of passengers and crew members who died had been released and with that came the sorrowful stories from the loved ones left behind. News stations had gotten word that there were a few original passengers on the flight who had given up their seats, narrowly avoiding the same fate as the 248 passengers and crew members, but thankfully those passengers’ names were kept under wraps.

The last thing Kelly needed was a media circus surrounding him. 

Boden gave Kelly a few days off, all but ordering him to talk to the CFD psychologist and get his head on straight. As good as Kelly was at hiding his emotions, Boden knew the man well and could read him easily. It was clear Kelly was struggling; how could anyone come that close to death and not be shaken up?

Stella took a few days off to stay with Kelly. Her nightmares about the plane crash were reason enough to take a few days off but Kelly wasn’t sleeping at all. He’d go through the motions and, even on the nights when he didn’t get out of bed for hours at a time, Stella would see the dark circles under his eyes grow darker every day. 

After the emotional comedown of learning Kelly was alive, Stella started researching survivor’s guilt. Kelly Severide wasn’t great at sharing his feelings (though he’d gotten exceptionally better in recent years) but he still felt them and Stella knew he’d be feeling this for a long time.

Survivor’s guilt was something they saw all the time as first responders and Kelly was showing a lot of the signs. 

He’d met with the CFD psychologist once already but nothing changed. He needed help, he needed to talk about everything, but Stella knew pushing him to talk wouldn’t end well. She just had to be there for him and hope he’d come to her when he was ready to talk. 

That day came the day of Bryan’s funeral. National news had been covering the plane crash exclusively and that extended to the funerals of the victims. They showed footage from Bryan’s funeral, including parts of the eulogy his widow, Vanessa, gave, and put pictures of the once happy couple and the newborn son Bryan never got to meet on the screen as her words played in the background.

It was the pictures of the baby that broke down the carefully constructed walls Kelly had put up. 

Stella had run into the living room at the sound of breaking glass. She saw Kelly’s hands shaking, glass from his broken beer bottle on the floor beside him. She hurried over to him and cupped his cheeks. “Hey, talk to me, please.”

And he did.

Like word vomit, Kelly told Stella everything running through his mind. He talked about how happy and thankful he was to be alive and home with her but those feelings were always accompanied by crippling guilt that he had survived when so many others had not. The biggest thing bothering him had been Bryan.

“I gave him the seat because he needed to get home and be there for his wife and their new baby. The backup flight would’ve gotten him to the hospital in time, or at the very least alive.” Kelly said quietly. “But I let him have the seat and now his son has to grow up without a father.”

“Hey, look at me.” Stella waited until Kelly’s weary eyes were on her before she started speaking again. “What happened to Bryan and the others was tragic and unimaginable but you are not to blame. You gave him a chance to get home to his family and I’m so sorry that wasn’t able to happen. You did a good thing and I know Bryan was grateful you gave him the chance.”

Kelly sniffled and ran a hand over his face. “I’m tired Stella. I don’t want to feel like this forever.”

“I know,” Stella answered softly. She played with the hair at the nape of his neck. “And you won’t. We’ll get you some help, get you someone to talk to, and you’ll be okay. I’ll be here with you, every step of the way. I promise.”

Despite the overwhelming and conflicting thoughts and emotions crashing over him, Kelly found himself believing what Stella was saying. She always saw the best in him—always believed in him—and if she thought he could get through this then maybe he could. 

[spotsupstuff]

If you are still accepting requests, can you draw fish overseers with colors? Do they have something extra compared to others overseers? And what is you take on them?

ok u got me here i can't say no to a req related to my own ocs

Fish's overseers are normal, actually!

he starts turning them back on during the Tinkerer's "campaign" (i've been thinkin how to turn the story and my scugs into campaigns lately, first comes Tinktink and then Seafarer)

the FUNKY thing that showed up in one of the pics with the baby scav is a completely different thing, actually!

based off of one of the images that Iggy randomly flips through in the game, i present you pearl delivery drones or, by the proper name, Pigeon Drones

their function was originally essentially the same to a carrier pigeon. they can hold on to one pearl and deliver it somewhere- they were mostly used between the residents of the iterator cities. gotta get that comfortable life goin, yanno. they are present mostly with the older iterators, Gen 1s to around the middle age of Gen 2s (Fish is an early Gen 2). so Pebbles, for example, wouldn't really be familiar with these! they went out of style and practice when citizen ID drones got the function to call other ID drones

Pigeon Drones were one of the first things the iterators tried using to communicate between each other without the broadcasts. they look far too much like weird overgrown batflies though n gon snapped up by just about any wildlife too often to be reliable, so the idea got discarded. and that made way for NSH and his invention of slugcats as messangers

in the Tinkerer's campaign the player can find a Pigeon Drone while exploring the Marketplace of Piscis (Fish's city). that can be then taken to Fish, he fixes it, tasks the player to bring him one of his neurons which he then inserts into the drone to power it up and also to extend his consciousness into

from then on the drone (basically Fish himself) trails after the player, guides them to Tinkerer's story points, can be used to distract predators or make them move out of the way or it can be given a pearl which it will then deliver to Fish's puppet chamber safely. Tinktink and Seaf are stuck on high rep with the scavs and cannot harm them, so the drone is supposed to be one more way for the player to keep colored pearls out of the scavs' reach. naturally this means the player will be without the drone until they make their way back to Fish again where he then reads the pearl for them. the drone has an estimated number of cycles before it makes it to Fish, so if the player is faster they can actually beat the thing to him (passages wouldn't work for this)

[bahamutgames]

Paper Mario: The Thousand Afterthoughts

Game: Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (May 23, 2024)

Console: Nintendo Switch

It's that time again!! If you had told me not too long ago that I'd have to give my thoughts on 2 different Mario RPG remakes on Switch (and an upcoming brand new M&L) so close to each other, I would've laughed you out of the room. But here we are. And now I look quite foolish, don't I?

My mood is kinda in free fall and I only want to write about these Mario RPGs when I'm in a good mood, but I think I'm okay right now. So I'll capitalize on it. Similar to the Super Mario RPG Remake I'll try to focus on what makes this such a lovely remake rather than gushing about why I adore TTYD. But if you're curious, it has some of the best characters, writing, and combat in the series. While I also think it's a really padded out game. That's my micro review of the original. Okay? Okay.

As always, this isn't a review. Just me throwing up my thoughts. Go play Thousand Year Door RIGHT NOW. Either the original or the remake. I'll wait.

Now that they're gone-

SPOILERS FOR THOUSAND YEAR DOOR AHEAD, YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!!

Opening

I feel like I've given you my long, tragic backstory with Mario RPGs a billion times but if you somehow missed it. These were my favorite games of all time, they fell off, I get sad, so on and so forth. Thousand Year Door is one of my favorite video games ever, in the trio of greatest Mario games ever made you have Super Mario RPG, Bowser's Inside Story, and TTYD. And, yeah, needless to say. I was bummed when Paper Mario started to go in its new direction. But I'd like to not give that the oxygen of attention at the moment.

So when they were like "Oh there's one last thing" in that direct, the MILLISECOND that first note hit I was like "HUH???" And I flipped my fucking LID, I couldn't believe they were ACTUALLY gonna remake TTYD. And not only that, it was looking good! And then it came out and I couldn't afford it lol.

But thankfully my good friend (Idk if they want me to name them here so I'll avoid it for the time being) bought it for me. Which was so so so nice of them and I genuinely appreciate it cause this was such a wonderful experience. So this review is sponsored by my friend :)

And again, I'll skip the suspense. This is another WONDERFUL remake that's a total love letter to the original and understands what made it so good.

Stuff I liked

I think the best place to start would be with how faithful this is to the original. It doesn't change pretty much ANYTHING. If there's any major changes to stuff that was in the original (not counting new content) I can't remember it. Not that I was expecting them to change it but still, it's nice that they didn't like, butcher it or something crazy. It's the same good plot, pretty much an identical script (with any changes being for the better imo.), and the same wonderful gameplay.

But of course, what makes a remake interesting is what ACTUALLY gets changed. And I think pretty much right out the gate you'll notice the MASSIVE graphics overhaul this game got. It takes a more papercraft approach like the secondary Paper Mario Trilogy (SS, CS, OK) but applies it to the worlds from the original game. And it looks AMAZING! This is basically exactly what I wanted ever since we got to see the SS Flavion in Smash 3DS lmao. In addition to that there's SO many new sprites in this game for each character. It's actually crazy just how much new animations there are for everyone. Not just teammates, who now have back sprites and TONS of facial expressions and reactions, but even enemies and NPCs have TONS of new things that can do. Sometimes enemies will laugh at you if you get fucked over, people will change to match the mood of what they're saying. It's actually crazy, I had to stop playing every 5 seconds to look at all the new sprites and details. One of my personal favorite new expressions is Mario tipping his hat in respect when death is brought up. It's small but it's such a Mario thing to do and I actually flipped out when I first saw it.

Then there's the redone soundtrack. OH MY GOD it's SOOOOO GOOD. This might be a better OST than the original, and may be one of my new favorite Mario RPG OSTs in general. Every song is lovingly redone and they all sound SO NICE. In particular the battle theme, which changes for each chapter, is SUCH a treat. I adored that. All the boss remixes are great (Cortez in particular was a big shock that I loved) and I believe the teammate themes are actually new. This was also a lovely addition. Bobbery (not biased because he's my favorite partner) probably has my favorite theme. And some of my favorite songs, 'Happiness and Sadness' + 'We're Counting On You, Mario' were both SO well done!! And it's changes and upgrades like these that REALLY add to the experience and make it even better in my opinion! Or at least, wonderful to reexperience!

Then of course there's the combat, which is pretty much completely unchanged as far as I can recall? But they did actually add new super bosses which was really cool! You can fight Prince Mush which is neat, and Whacka which is AWESOME! This actually gives a reason to do the Pit of 100 Trials a second time (fun fact, this remake was my first time ever beating the pit! And I did it without dying. You can retry a floor if you die in this remade version of the pit, just as an fyi).

And the game over all is filled with nice little changes like that. Stuff that's maybe not ground breaking, or giving you a brand new reason to try it like the changes to Super Mario RPG's combat. But in my opinion, these small quality of life improvements are just as good. A much easier to access quick travel room to warp to each chapter is added in the sewers. Saving is instant, similar to Origami King and such. Most of the backtracking that people complain about has been cut out with simple pipes and springs in convenient locations. They even add more stuff to collect like letting you unlock CONCEPT ART WHICH IS SO FUCKING COOL, I still haven't looked through it all but it's actually amazing they did this and I'd KILL for Mario Art Books from every Mario game please just release more Mario concept art UGH. And of course there's the changed dialogue to confirm vivian being trans which is so nice, and I'm honestly shocked they actually did it. It feels almost un-nintendo of them to do. But I'm so happy they did it! It's a real remake, baby!!

In general, yeah, this game is perfect. It's filled with clear love for the original, without being afraid of acknowledging where improvements were made in future titles. Like, again, instant saving or the really nice graphics or music changing for each chapter. And while there aren't any WILD changes like brand new cutscenes in the Super Mario RPG remake, I'd say what they add and ultimately didn't add makes this such a wonderful remake all the same. I had a blast playing it and it felt so good to just, genuinely no coping love playing Paper Mario again!

Stuff I didn't like

But of course no game is perfect. And I do have some nit picks. Like, why don't they use Mario's official new signature when he signs up to join the Glitz Pit? No but seriously, folks-

There's not much wrong with this remake, there's some small stuff like them not fixing EVERY bit of fluff from the original. You still have to mash 100 times for the 'I Love You' scene. Which is funny! But like, no one complains about THIS but you all complain about a little backtracking? Amateur hour. I also think the Prince Mush fight isn't as cool as everyone says it is. I'm not huge on fights where you have to play 100% perfectly but I know that's just a me thing. And I wish SO badly they could've done a tiny bit more to have teammates interact with each other more. Although I do love that everyone comes out whenever you stand on the altar in front of the door. But like, I think everyone should've come out when the Crystal Stars are gathering everyone's wishes... OH MY GOD I FORGOT THEY MADE THE CRYSTAL STARS UGLY IN THIS REMAKE OH NOOOOO GAME RUINED-

But really, I think my big main complaint is that this remake feels a little... Too easy? Compared to the original. In the original the game is MASSIVELY padded out by having you get constantly fucked over by the stage elements. But this time I swear I got hit by a stage element maybe 2 or 3 times. But my enemy was CONSTANTLY getting fried or slammed to death in every fight. It's too common on the enemies, but feels like it's massively toned down on you. I think in the original you can get fucked over a bit much, but this doesn't feel like a compromise, if that makes sense?

Final Thoughts

But WHO CARES!! This remake is SO good! Genuinely, if you love Thousand Year Door, if you hate Thousand Year Door, if you've never played Paper Mario in your life. I think you owe it to yourself to finally experience this wonderful video game. It's truly one of my favorite video games ever and I think it's such a fantastic entry into the RPG genre.

From small changes to big changes, this is a wonderful remake. I don't know if I'd say it's a replacement to the original, personally. I actually think the original's more simple graphics have a GREAT and cartoonish feel to them that's lost a little bit with the papercraft look. And obviously nostalgia is a hell of a drug, but if someone told me they prefer this version? It's absolutely a no-brainer why. I'm so happy I loved this game so much...

Sooooo, how about that Paper Mario 64 remake, guys-

===

And that's that! Once again, I know I've said this a million times. But even though this remake was amazing and made me fall in love with Paper Mario all over again. I'm still waiting patiently for them to do a new Paper Mario in this style. I'm only so impressed that they made an amazing game amazing again. I want to know if they have what it takes to make something BRAND NEW with such a wonderful plot, characters, and combat. I'm very excited for the potential of future Mario RPGs regardless though, and I can't wait to see what's in store for us with Brothership. But Intelligent Systems, I AM wait for a new Paper Mario in this style. You've been warned.

That's all I have for now. Go out and play a game you adore!

[clevercatchphrase]

2023 Year In Review~

at the time of me writing this, it is 8:11pm on tuesday night, january second. Let's see how long it takes me to type this entire thing. I expect no less than two hours. This is gonna be a long one, so I'm gonna put it under a read-more. Proceed only if you dare!

So! Another year down, another begun, and this is my.... 5th? time looking back on my year and assessing what I accomplished and what I did. Lots of changes and new things happened to me this year! Not nearly as many good things as bad! But first I'm gonna dig up my old resolutions list and see how well I did on them. Let's see... for 2023 I had 9 goals, six of which were serious and 3 of which were more casual. those goals were;

Read 12 new books in a year (one book a month)

Finish the Snowdin Arc before Ghost Switch's 5th birthday

Rewrite the 3rd draft of my Nanowrimo project from 2021/22

Write 4 one-shots for BSaPT

Solidify the details of the waterfall arc

The one secret goal

Finish writing the last 4 chapters of Clemency and finally post the dang thing

build a comic buffer of 8 pages, and finally,

write the crack fic

Of these nine goals, I achived... 4 of them, those being reading 12 books, finishing the snowdin arc before june 18th, rewriting my 2021 nanowrimo project, and finalizing the waterfall arc for Ghost Switch. All of these were serious goals, which I am proud of! but it was still less than half, which was a little disappointing. As in past years, I'll go into more detail below:

Read 12 books I BLEW THIS ONE OUT OF THE WATER! the grand total of books I read this year was THIRTY-SIX! three times as many! In fact, I forced myself to stop in order to have more books to read for 2024! Most of the books I listened to this year were through librivox, and mostly on my commute to work. Great way to pass the time! I wrote short little notes about the books I read on a personal discord with only me in it, so let me see if I can just copy and paste all of that here... (all of my original notes will be italicized, while additional thoughts on it now will not be)

1) Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Short, cute! Inspirational. About self actualization. Read by richard Harris. People call this a demonic book?? Apparently a fourth part added in 2014. Look it up later. (Edit; I never did look it up later. there's an audiobook for this on youtube, and while the voice is nice, there is, like, a solid 10 minute segment with a single violin note playing in the background and it is GRATING) 2) fire bed and bone. Ok. Middle of the road. Too focused on people and not the dog, but I get that's the point. it's ~symbolic~. Like the use of no dialogue and no name for the main dog 3) dogs of the spires book 1: reads like fan fiction (derogatory). Sentences go on for 4 or 5 words too long. Used the word orbs for eyes 3 times. Duke is ALWAYS FUCKING GRINNING. Half-brother reveal makes no sense and comes out of nowhere. How… Big/old is Step? Talks waaay too mature for a kid. What happened to Twig? Very tell and not show. Pink foam pink foam pink foam. Why are dogs separated? Hoe do the packs work? Why training? Not given enough to care for characters. Feels like a warrior cat reskin. Too rushed and yet nothing happens at the same time. (I was very curious about post-apocolyptic xenofiction this year, and this was one of the books I could find on the matter, but it's very childishly written and just... bad. Surprisingly, there seems to be a very tiny but dedicated fandom for it on youtube? the series has a fandom wiki anyway...)

4) old granny fox. Very cute! A little repetitive, but passable for a children's novel. Great introduction to xenofiction for kids. Wonderful audio book. 5)the adventures of Sammy Jay. Short sweet also a lot of fun. Both books are Definitely of their time with their usage of the word "queer" as a synonym for "strange/odd"

Now, this is a little known fact about me, but I'm secretly a massive furry. yeah, who could've guessed, right? Anyway, i'm always on the look out for good xenofiction, and when I searched through the "animals" playlist of the librivox youtube channel and stumbled across the books by Thornton W Burgess, I was INSTANTLY enamored. Old Granny Fox, and The Adventures of Sammy Jay were the first two I read/listened to, and was immediately captivated. I MUST give extra props to the narrators of these audiobooks, with some of the more frequent readers for this series doing unique voices for each character, which really added to the charm (Jude Somers and John Lieder particularly come to mind). I WISH I had these books as a kid. I love the way they describe animal behavior and reasoning. While it is anthropomorphized, it never crosses a line into "too" human, if that makes sense. There's another book on this list that is very similar to Burgess' work, with talking animals, but in that book, the animals make and read signs on the doors of their houses, and go to animal tailors to get their clothes fit. this doesn't happen in Burgess' work. Sure, they talk about their homes and the coats they wear, but it's all very intentionally conveying their natural states and habitats in a slightly more human way for us to picture them. Sure, the art on the covers of the books may say otherwise, but it's never depicted that way in the actual text. All their behavior is very animalistic, too, explaining their thoughts and actions in a way that would make sense for a wild forest creature. These books are a little gentle when it comes to the cycle of life. While the predator characters do need to hunt, they are always juuuust out of luck when they are the main character, and the prey characters juuuust manage to escape each time they're the focus. I will definitely be reading more of Burgess' books this year (the man wrote over 170 of them!), but expect quite a few more titles of his to pop up on this list.

6) adventures of jimmy skunk 7)adventures of paddy beaver (not much to say on these two. both were charming, but I feared I would have sounded repetitive if I just kept writing "cute!" in my notes) 8) my father's dragon Short, cute and silly. Listened to the audiobook. Does the physical have pictures? Not really so much about the dragon. Wish there was more after the ending, like what became of the dragon? (I also watched the netflix movie adaptation of this book. I.... could not stand the dragon in the movie. I'm sorry, he's annoying as hell) 9)adventures of buster bear

10)adventures of old mister toad.Favorite one so far. Puts toads in a positive light and describes them as beautiful instead of ugly or gross. [Burgess] Really appreciates all animals and their unique abilities and traits

11) The tale of freddie firefly. Ehh, okay. Not as great as Thorton Burgess' books, but still enjoyable. Not the same 'voice'. (this book was written by Scott Bailey) 12) The adventures of Chatterer the red squirrel. Fine~ Fun. 13) The Fox That Wanted Nine Golden Tales. Funny, short. Would make a good 22 minute short film 14)tale of master meadow mouse. Alright~ why do the animals know what groundhogs day and February are? How does mouse know how to write, and fox to read? Do they wear clothes? Mention a tailor frog. Oars for a raft. Don't like the animals being described as "(color) person". Feels like it's missing an adjective, ie "feathered" or "furred". (This is what I was talking about above. Scott Bailey wrote very similar stories to Burgess, but something was just... off about is writing style. ) 15) the adventures of reddy fox. Okay. Feels like an earlier book. Not as kind as the other ones. (I later looked it up and confirmed this was one of the earlier books in his series, and this one was, like, his tenth ever published one)

16) the adventures of jerry muskrat

17) the tale of doctor Doolittle. Fun! Kiiiiiinda racist in the africa parts, but an overall good time! (I'm more familiar with the Doolittle movies, but was surprised to learn that Doolittle's ability to speak to animals was something he learned with effort and practice, and not a magic power or weird innate ability of his. It was an interesting read!) 18) Nomads of the North. Fun animal romp. I Flinched at the use of "fat" "tar baby" "half breed" and "Indians". First half is mostly about the bear, then a sudden sharp turn to mostly about the dog. Kinda meanders, has no over-arching through-line, conflict or plot. (Apparently a movie was based off of this book, but focused more on the humans than the animals. Eh, it was the 1920s. what can you do) 19)falcons of nerabedla; short sci-fi novella about a bodyswap time traveler. Its… Fine. Not the greatest. A little too confusing and kind of wish they explained things more earlier on. Not really about the falcons. Even for a sci-fi, still pretty sexist in the future.(honestly I don't even know if I should count this as it's own book. I'm pretty sure it was a short story inside a bigger magazine?) 20) south American jungle tales. Enjoyable! Very strong jungle book vibes with a South American flare. The story with the racoon was pretty dark, though. 21) a gryphon's journey. Too fast pace. Characters have a habit of spilling their entire backstories onto arias without prompting. Not enough show, not enough explanation of how the gryphons work. Some aspects completely pushed to the sides, like the satyrs and naugi until the end. Very rushed. The skyhaven arc could have been its own book, the stygagryph arc could have been it's own book. The heron gryph arc could have been it's own book. Not enough time to get to know the characters or care about them. Arias speaks far too maturely for his age, I feel. (Still on a gryphon kick from the last... two years now? Mostly I'm waiting for the fourth book in the Griffin Ranger Series to come out before I read the third. The author said it would come out before the end of 2023, but that date came and went and it still isn't on amazon at the time of writing (which is now 9:26pm, jeez...) I want to read isthmus so bad, but I don't want to wait on a cliffhanger) 22) myths and legends from Alaska. Okay. Feels very white washed and overly simplified. missing nuance. Reader is so deadpan and monotone that the audio book was a slog to get through (One thing I was determined to do for my own enrichment this year was to read more legends and mythologies from other cultures. There are SO MANY cool creatures and monsters and ideas out there, and I just feel so LIMITED by the small amount I know. We humans come up with some of the craziest shit imaginable!) 23) the white czar; a story of a polar bear. Bad, boring, incredibly racist. Barely about the bear at all! 24) the twins of buster bear. Another thornton w. Burges book. Its middle of the road. Certainly not bad, but my least favorite so far. Just kinda dull, and the audio book was horrendous. (honestly if the audiobook wasn't so bad, I wouldn't have disliked it so much, but it was a CHORE to listen to this one. I mean, thank you librivox for doing all this work for free, but is it too much to ask for some sort of vetting process for your volunteer readers??) 25) the wishing stone stories; BEST thornton w burges book so far! I would have been obsessed with this book as a child. Transforming into animals to learn about their ways. Not super PG like the others. The animals hunt and kill and get killed. 10/10

26) lightfoot the leaping goat 27) Toto the bustling beaver. Both alright. Nowhere near as charming as thornton Burgess, but endearing none the less. A little more 4th wall breaking. Toto audio book fun with silly voices, but I don't like the description of "tramps". A little too humanized for me. Lightfoot audio book fucking trash. Almost gave up. (Both of these books were written by Richard Barnum, another children's xenofiction writer of the time, but I quickly came to realize that his writing style is just not for me. I listened to a handful of his books too, this year, but they left me feeling uncomfortable more often than not because common attitudes of the time period reeeeeally show through his work.) 28) the adventures of poor misses quack. How do these qualify as adventures. She lands in a pond, dumps her backstory for 60 percent of the book, finds her mate and lives happily ever after. Not very strong, not very adventurous. 29) Mother West Wind "When" Stories; a lot of fun, charming, Aesop fable-esque. Fun mythology for children. A little too much peter rabbit, but I understand why he's there 30) the adventures of tamba the tame tiger. Yeahhhh, this series isnt my thing. A little too humanized, and the audio book is fuck GARBAE. (Pretty sure I meant to say "fucking garbage" there, but "fuck garbae" is funnier)

31) joust 32) alta 33) sanctuary All really good! All revolve around dragons and their usage and care. The books are a liiiiiitle too serendipitous, with the right thing always happening at the right time. Vetch/kuron doesn't "fail" enough. Second book is the best so far because the magi are a legitimate threat and it feels like time is running out so they must always stay one step ahead. (All written by Mercedes Lackey, all about dragon husbandry with a nice Egyptian flare! Check them out! But... maybe skip Aerie, the last in the series. It's not really worth it.) 34)aerie weakest one. Ahketen was absolutely unbearable and I didn't like the literal deus ex machina at the end with the actual gods coming down to help. Final ranking in order from best to worst; 2)alta, 1)joust, 3)sanctuary and 4)aerie. 35) the adventures of johnny chuck. Fun, average. Simple but doesn't need to be complicated. First of the thornton books ive read where the main character forms a family with children as the main focus 36) blacky the crow. Fun and charming as always. Feels a little simpler than the others with only 3 main mini stories, two of which involve stealing eggs. I wonder if I can find a box set of these books. (Aaaand that wraps up all the books I read this year! 15 of them were from thornton w burgess, and I hope to read even more from him this year! If you know of Burgess' books, tell me your favorites! I'd love to discuss them with someone~)

2.WHOO! the time is now 9:50, and I am just starting on talking about my second goal, which was to finish the snowdin arc of Ghost Switch before its 5th birthday. I did this! I did this exactly on june 18th! (for public readers, anyway. Anyone on my patreon got the page early, but a one week difference isn't much in the grand scheme of things.) I also get to say that I passed the Snowdin Test this year! "What is the Snowdin Test," you might ask? well, it's something a mutual acquaintance of mine, from the Fan Fic Paradise discord I lurk in, made aaaaall the way back in 2018, right when I was just startin' out with Ghost Switch. (Hi, Vikingaspoke, I don't know if you follow me on tumblr, or even have a tumblr for that matter, but I want you to know I thought about your thesis every single day since you first posted it, and have been determined (har har) to succeed where so many other undertale stories have failed. I did it once with my Epic-long fan fic, You Monster, but to do the same in comic form was a new and unique challenge. it took me almost 5 years, but I got there in the end! Cutting out the memories, I've officially concluded snowdin and started waterfall just this year!) I've also got to mention that I think my estimation on how long it will take me to finish Ghost Switch is slowly unfolding to be oddly accurate. I've never made a comic this long, but back in 2019, when I made an anniversary comic for Ghost Switch's 1st birthday, I guestimated that it would take me roughly 11 more years to finish the story, meaning it would take me 12 in total from start to finish. Well, we are rapidly approaching the half-way point of the comic, and if I haul ass it get to 312 pages out by the 6th birthday, we very well might actually hit it. I haven't drawn up to page 312 yet, but it's strangely close. Granted, my guess didn't account for the length of the flashback segments, which may push it back, but the sheer Idea that the "vibes" I got on how long each arc would take just by roughly judging the time it took me to finish ruins as a baseline to compare... it's just weird, man. I just "felt" that snowdin would be 1.5 times as long as the ruins, waterfall 2 times as long as the ruins, and hotland+New Home also 1.5 times that of the ruins. I have no metric for this since the final scenes were not written out yet. It just... feels like it should be that, and I'm kinda scared at how on track it's been.

3. Third goal was to Rewrite my Nanowrimo project from 2021/22. I did this as well! It's still no where near a final draft ready for beta readers or anything, and towards the end of the year I got distracted writing the second book in the trilogy because this is an epic fantasy story so it just HAS to have three books. Maybe I'll self-publish these stories one day. it sure is the most passionate I've ever been about something original i've ever written, but I want to make sure the entire rough draft of all three stories is done first so I can easily go back and add hints in previous parts without having to retcon anything later down the line. I've already had to do it once, so no doubt in my mind I'll have to do it again when I start trying to wrap things up in the final book. Speaking of the sequel, that was my nano project for this year! I won, but much like 2021 and 22, I didn't finish the book. my 21/22 project ended up being roughly 80k words, and I still expect to add about 10k more when I add some missing scenes and flesh out some description. I don't think that will happen with the second book. If anything, I expect it to barely stick around 50k in total because I just know I wrote a lot of filler and junk and repetitive stuff in the first draft this year because I was STRUGGLING with nanowrimo this year. Idk yet if I'm going to make a rewrite of book 2 my nano project for 2024. we'll have to wait and see how I'm feeling once september/october rolls around.

4. My fourth goal was to write 4 one-shots for my fic collection of Blankets, Socks, and Pillow Talk, over on AO3. I didn't do this, mostly because I was too distracted with my original fiction this year. i DID write one one-shot, hilariously during nanowrimo when I was suffering from writers block. Hopefully this year will be different. I would like this fic collection to at least hit 50k words so it could be a full novel of short stories all on its own. I think I can do it, I just need the time and inspiration.

5. My fifth goal, and last one I achieved this year was to finalize the details of the waterfall arc. I'm sure I've said it before in the past, but all the major story beats for Ghost Switch were planned out well before I even drew the first page, but the scenes connecting them were filled in more as I went. Rest assured, I make sure the entire arc is scripted before I start it, but my dirty little secret is that the snowdin arc wasn't completely written until I nearly finished drawing the ruins arc, and I was well into the snowdin arc before the final scenes of the waterfall arc were written down. It is now, and has been for at least 10 months. This was a goal I always knew I would achieve. Sometimes the resolutions I make are things I know are gonna happen whether I want them to or not. Sometimes you just gotta give yourself a guaranteed win to boost your self-confidence, you know? (now I just need to do the same for the Hotland arc. I think it's gonna take me 3 years minimum to finish waterfall, just like it did snowdin, so I got time, but the sooner I figure out the dialogue, the better. Will I make that a goal for this year? Ehh, probably not. I just wanna focus on building a buffer first)

6. The one secret goal was not achieved. If it was, this post wouldn't nearly be as long and you all would have heard about it as soon as it happened. Idk if it will happen this year, or anytime soon. A vicious combination of anxiety, the economy, and the uncertain state of the world make me hesitant to even attempt this goal.

aaand those were all my serious goals for this year! the time is now 10:37, I am tired and dizzy. I'm gonna save this as a draft and get back to it tomorrow~ nighty night~

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OKAY! IT'S JANUARY 3RD NOW, 8:34AM! LET"S CONTINUE!

my three casual goals, none of which I accomplished, were;

7) Finish writing clemency. While I didn't do this, I did think about the story a lot. If you've been around since late 2022, You'll know that when AI writing generators started gaining popularity, news broke that the internet was scraped for data sets, including fan fiction websites like AO3. This extremely pissed me off because Fan Fiction is... well, I guess there's no better word than "sacred" to me. The unadulterated desire to write, create, share and expand on media that has touched us, inspired us, (hell, even angered us!) and to do this all purely because we can and we want to, just to make connections with other people who were fans of the same media, people we may never meet, thousands of miles apart from us, who we can touch and inspire in turn... Fan fiction is a gift. it means so much to me, from the professional writer who writes ficlets as an exercise, to tweens just starting their creative writing journey by imagining themselves hanging out with their favorite characters, to the hobbyists who wanted to imagine how things would change if just one thing happened differently, to those who feel underrepresented in media, and want to see themselves be the hero. People working through shit, people who are just bored, people who love a story so much they will retell it a hundred times over so it never has to end. Young, old, girl, boy, fluent writers, to writers in fandom where english is not their first language. It's an amazing, nearly incomprehensible melting pot that can connect us all... and some CEO jerkoffs just wanted to steal all this heart-felt work and feed it to a machine to make a quick buck. I was so enraged, so violated that works of passion could be abused this way that I locked down all my fics on AO3, and you now need to be logged in to read any of them, and I didn't write a word of fan fic in over a year. Every time I thought my anger had cooled off, more news would come up about "AI" generated stories appearing in the kindle app, or authors having works published under their name without their consent because thieves are trying to make a quick buck with their identity to trick fans, or hear that tv show and movie writers being told they are worthless and replacable, and I would get mad all over again. I'm still mad just remembering it, and until actual laws are in place regarding the use of "AI" in art and writing, I'll stay mad, and my stories will be under lock and key. If some good has come out of it, I focused a lot more on original fiction this year, which I haven't shared online at all, so no fear of that being stolen, but I do miss writing fan fic more regularly, yet I can't stand the thought of something I make for fun being taken and used by someone else to line their pockets. It's like... the antithesis of the purpose of storytelling to begin with and makes me sick to my stomach.

WOW! That sure was a rant! Let's move on! My 8th goal and second casual one was to make a comic page buffer of 8 pages. I almost did this one! At one point, (like, the second week of december) I had a buffer of 5 pages because I was finishing up Memory 5 of ghost switch, but then I realized I could line up the end of the memory with the end of the year, and I ended up posting all of my reserve pages in, like, a week! During those weeks, though, instead of making more pages to keep the buffer supplied, I played a lot of video games instead, which I hadn't done since... october? because I didn't touch my PS4 at all during november while I was writing for nanowrimo, and I missed playing Horizon Foridden West and wanted to get back to it. Maybe this year, though? I'm dead set on trying to get to 312 pages before Ghost Switch's 6th birthday, which is, like, 30 pages away, so I gotta improve my output process regardless.

And the 9th goal of mine and the last of the casual ones, was to write that crack fic. This goal has been on my resolutions for a couple years now, but I still haven't done it. I'm gonna blame my AI hatred grudge for this, since it made me not to want to write any fan fic at all this year. I'll get to this someday, but maybe now I should put it on the back burner for some newer goals and projects~

Okay! The time is now 8:57! if you're still reading this stream-of-conscious ramble of mine, it's time for me to list off my goals for this year!

IN 2024 I WOULD LIKE TO...

Read 12 new books this year (one book a month)

Reach 312 pages of Ghost Switch by June 18th (the 6th birthday)

Build (and maintain!) a comic buffer of 8 pages

Go walking on 3 new greenways around my neighborhood

Go camping by myself

Make at least one new song comic

Finish 4 video games to as close to 100% as I can (currently looking at Horizon Forbidden West, the original Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Blue, Carto, Alba, Stray, Journey, Unraveled and The Talos Principle 2, as these games currently entice me the most, but I still want flexibility and options if one game ends up not clicking)

Finish the first rewrite of my 2023 nanoproject (this will probably end up being my nano24 project, if i'm being honest with myself)

Write 4 one-shots for BSapT

-- These 9 goals I want to be serious about, but like last year, I have some casual goals i want to do as well. They include...

10. Get reacquainted with Neocities and make a personal website

11. Learn to code to improve said website/learn to make games

12.Listen to the entire royalty free youtube library for reasons

13. Research every d.o.n.g. ever featured on VSauce, for neocities reasons.

I feel like I had a couple more off-handed things I wanted to do this year, but these 4 casual things are the only ones I can remember at the moment. Maybe I'll come back and add to this list later.

Alright! The time is now 9:37AM, and I have to go run some errands/do some house chores! Saving this again as a draft to come back to this later!

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Okay! Done with errands, and it is 11:30am on the nose! Time to resume my inane ramblings and hopefully finish this thing within the next two hours.

One thing I mentioned in my recap/review of 2022 was that I never actually felt like I was looking back on the year in depth. So much was forgotten or blurred together with other years because I didn't keep track of it. Well, this year I kept a monthly diary, again in my personal discord of 1, and wrote in it whenever I felt anything of note or significance happened to me, or whenever I had reoccurring thoughts or feelings. i managed to write in it at least once a month, often times twice, that being every two weeks. I found the whole experience quite therapeutic, frankly, and I'll share snippets of it now, though I will cut out the more personal entries. Be forwarned! A lot of the following text is straight up copied and pasted from my diary entries, so there is a lot of misspellings and short hand. I'll try to fix some of the more obvious ones, but these paragraphs are just as stream-of-concious writing as the rest of this massive post. Anything in parentheses with A/N is me adding context right now on the present day!

january 5th, two very close coworkers of mine quit due to upper management being petty. These two employees had worked here for nearly two decades. They were married to each other and were the mom and dad of the work base, with everyone else relying on them, looking up to them, and going to them for their problems. Them walking out scared everyone lower on the pecking order, because we felt that we were no longer protected from manager bullshit with them gone. I was off the day they walked out and didn't get to say goodbye. the grief I felt upon learning they left caused me to have my first ever anxiety attack that night. It was one of the worst experiences I've ever had in my life. I try to keep in touch, but we don't talk much due to our age gaps and busy work lives.

in January I also had a body-horror nightmare that still makes me squirm just thinking about it. I dreamt no one in the world wore pants, but we were all cool with it because we had pockets built into our legs. Not like... fabric sewn into skin, mind you, I mean naturally evolved extra flaps of flesh over our thighs like the pouch of a cartoon kangaroo. flesh pockets. even in my dream I could feel them. the insides were surprisingly dry and smooth- no sweat or hair in there, but the sensation was uncomfortably irritating, like when you rub your knuckles too much and it feels sore. worst part of this dream was, I woke up, thought "thank god I'll for get this in a few hours", but then watched cartoons later that day and saw a... tom and jerry(?) short where tom also had built in pockets on his body which made me remember everything, and now I can't forget.

February 8th. Watched The Flight if Dragons. Good, campy 80s feel. Drags in some parts, rushed in others. Some aspects feel like they have 0 explanation. (How did peter separate from gorbash? Did peter know that denouncing magic would vanish him from the safe haven? What happened to the princess's parents? EVERYTHING with the wolf and whatever was going on between the huntress and knight. I also Watched 1996 dragonheart. Slow start, but good fun. Pretty decent cgi. Acting is downright TERRIBLE in places, but it was good campy fantasy fun in the end.

On february 14th, I dreamed of a haunted house, but the house wasnt malicious. It felt like a friend that worried for your safety when you left, because it was rooted to the spot and could not come to you when you were in trouble. I did not stay long, and felt melancholic when I had to leave. Once outside, I turned around and said "goodbye house" and waved it farewell. Then, in all the curtains and windows, dozens and dozens of shadowy human arms waved goodbye to me in return, wishing me well and safe travels. It would miss me, but not keep me prisoner, because a house is only a home if you had the freedom to leave and return when you wished.

March 18. I got recommended a video on YouTube about screen savers, and it reminded me of one that our family computer had in the early 00s. After searching for a while, I rediscovered it; the createacard screensaver pack. So many buried memories unearthed. The sense of wanderlust and inspiration and not over such beautiful art came rushing back to me; https://youtu.be/zFPKmnegK0c

I was generally tired for all of march, not having much energy for any project outside of my comic, and even that was starting to wear me down.

I played a lot of kingdom hearts 1 in late February/early march. Synthesized the Ultima weapon for the first time. Cried farming sniper wilds and stealth soldiers because they unsettle me. I'm trying to grind to level 100 before the game is over. Debated on doing a kh song comic this year (A/N: This did not happen)

I want to redo my personal website. Wix added an image file size limit, and my whole site currently surpasses that twice over. The wix site editor is slow and finicky any way. Looked into blogspot and WordPress. I want to start a xenofiction book review podcast. Are solo podcasts popular? I Looked into neocities. Felt an overwhelming sense of nostalgia and child-like wonder. Made my own account/basic website, but haven't edited anything yet.

I got hit with the seasonal depression late February/early march, watched some home gardening videos on youtube and got inspired. The videos I watched were about people building actual massive scale pond and lakes, but I just went to home depot and Lowe's and Wal-Mart, bought, like, 12 different kinds of vegetable and flower seeds, 3 long rectangular planters and 2 massive bags of dirt. I also bought some peat seed starters, a plant heating pad (which I might just give to my cat) and a plant light. I spent over 150$ total.

My cat turned 5 years old on the 15th this march as well!

In late april I got really into analog/digital horror args and unfiction realities. Been watching a lot of Night Mind and similar analysis videos (I'm too lazy and dumb to try and solve them myself).

April 28th. Maternal grandfather might be passing soon. He's been in and out of hospitals since late January, needs around the clock assisted living, and my mom and her sister are constantly having to take time out of their lives to help him. I hate it. It's stressful and aggravating to mom, the assisted living people are incompetent, and my mom is stretching herself thin, running ragged trying to do everything at once. It's not fair to her. It's not fair to anyone.

May 11th. Mom's computer has a solitaire program with hundreds of versions of solitaire, most of which have gone unplayed. Ive been trying new games and learning them through trial and error (the "rules" tab doesnt work because it accesses a file that is no longer installed on this computer). Ive found new favorites in "twenty" and in "carpet". It makes life just a little bit more interesting.

June 4th. Been really into watching blind lets plays of undertale from 2022/3 lately, as well as dissection/discussion of undertale's music. Also into shayy's undertale mods. Glad the fandom is still having fun with this game. Got interested in pokemon infinite fusion. Downloaded it, but havent played yet. Getting back into PMD, though I have to grind now for leveling and evolving mons I cant recruit. Took a break from listening to librivox books, but might pick it up again. Same with checking in on flight rising. This year will be it's 10th birthday iirc

Looked at my ao3 recently and noticed I havent written anything in over 6 months. Still mad about the AI data scraping. I didn't stop writing entirely though. I spent all of October, November, January and February writing an original story, and still really proud/excited about it. Finished typing the rough draft on Wednesday, taking a break before I start edits.

All my flowers I planted in February are dying. Has a lot of rain this year. I think they're getting over watered.

June 6th. Been thinking a lot about Hawaii recently. I miss my old school and house. Went to Google earth to look at it again. I think our old neighborhood of [REDACTED] was razed and rebuilt becuase the streets dont look the same. This makes me feel… Not quite sad or bitter, but hurt none the less. I knew ever since we moved here chances of going back would be slim, but knowing my most nostalgic childhood home is gone forever…

Saturday June 17th fucking sucked for everyone. Two coworkers got seriously injured at work. My car battery completely died and couldn't be jump started. Had to call for a tow and wait 2+ hours for it to arrive. Wanted to cancel but they told me I would be charged even if the tow never arrived. Got charged 80 extra dollars for a "wench fee" I didn't need, but they talked to fast for me to think about it. Massive accident on the 4-lane highway home put all traffic down to 1 lane, and we were stuck there an extra hour. Dairy Queen's lobby closed early, going to drive through only, sonic was OUT OF ICE CREAM, and the local grocery store was almost sold out too. Did not get home until almost 10pm. Both my car AC and my mom's car a.c. don't work. I FUCKING LOVE OWNING A CAR. IT'S SO MUCH FUN AND SO FREEING.

June 28. Been playing a new video game recently; horizon forbidden west. Price dropped by 50% on Amazon and I had a 10$ gift card so I got the game for 1/3 the launch price. It's okay so far. Been slowly exploring and uncovering the map, ignoring the main story and discovering secrets. There is definitely A LOT more to do in this game than in the first. Dont really like a lot of Aloy's line deliveries. Some of the controls are different which throws me off. Robo enemies cool as ever, though noticeably fewer dinosaur ones.

Mom continues to take care of her dad. Aunt does too. All of mom's free time and energy this summer has been stolen by him. She keeps insisting she won't have to look after him as much when he gets better. I don't think he's ever getting better.

All my flowers I planted back in March have died. It's just too damn hot for them. It's too hot for everyone. We have just hit ten straight days with weather in the triple digits. I'm miserable.

Might have to replace my laptop soon. It's almost 12 years old, the battery doesn't work anymore, it overheats, and it's super slow. Looking into gaming laptops.

June 29; grandfather passed away last night. All I feel is relief.

July 11th. I got gifted my grandfather's bed, but had to switch it back out with my old bed because it was too soft and fucking up my back. No lumbar support.

July wrap up: month went by sooo fast I can hardly believe it. Its too fucking hot. Texas is stuck in a heat cyclone. Havent played solitare in a while, or listened to audio books. I managed to do 7 jigsaw puzzles this summer, and hope to do one more. each one has been 1000 pieces minimum, with two being 2000 pieces, and 1 being 3000. I should have taken more pictures of them finished, but it's fun to know we finished one puzzle per week this whole summer.

August 5th; Wish I recorded some smaller details throughout the year, not realizing id want to recall the last time I did something. When was the last time I intentionally watched a movie or listened to a specific song? (but then again, how will I know I'm going to think the exact thought; "when was the last time I did X specific thing?") I rewatched wolf children 2 months back for the first time in years, same with relistening to HeyHiHello songs. Been having a lot of lower back pain lately. Stretching helps, but I can no longer sit or sleep in my favorite position without cramping up. I need to be perfectly straight and i hate it. (A/N: The very next night I pulled a muscle in my back so bad I thought I was paralyzed. for the first time in years, I had to call in sick to work because I could not physically move from my bed)

August 19th. Went to a chiropractor. No pinched nerves or slipped disc, just a pulled muscle. Stretching helps and have been wearing a back brace. Finally had grandpa's memorial on the tenth. It was nice to learn he made friends at his community center. I'll try to be out going when I'm old too. Doctors would not sign his death certificate for 7 weeks because they just didn't give a shit, and we finally threatened to call a lawyer. He finally got cremated.

August 30th- recently had to go to pepboys to get my car fixed again. It was "stuck" in neutral. Grandma came and picked me up to let me go home. She said she doesnt plan to be driving much longer and intends to give her car to me. I dont know how to feel about this. Grateful for the future gift? Sad that she is getting older? I had to have my car towed and had to leave work early, which I hate doing because it makes me feel like I'm leaving everyone else to do my work, but I did not want another repeat with the towing situation that happened in june.

September 19th. I finally put on my brave face and ordered a new laptop for myself earlier this month (the 5th to be precise) and today it finally arrived. I bought myself an HP omen gaming laptop. It's so nice, but also different and a little scary trying to adjust to all this new interface. I went from using windows 7 for the last 11 years to jumping into windows 11. It'll be an adjustment. Gotta re-download all my old programs and transfer my files. Hope my drawing tablet will still work on this laptop. Might have to buy a new one of those as well. I already hate the subscription model being used if you want to do ANYTHING with the tech YOU BOUGHT nowadays. Goodbye microsoft office! It was fun while I knew you! I got libreoffice now! Fuck off adobe! OpenShot and Shotcut are my video editing programs now! I still need to learn my way around OBS, opentoonz, and pencil2d, but I gotta say there's something.... rustic? homey? about having a desktop full of opensource programs made by people who want to help other creatives free of charge. I miss the days where you buying something meant you own it forever, but free homegrown programs updated by community feels friendlier than just owning a shiny "offical" big named piece of software, I gotta admit.

The new laptop is wonderfully fast and silent. It cost me 2 grand so I hope it lasts just as long as my old one. There is no removable battery from what I can tell, which is sad. Also no disc drive. The keys light up rainbow which is cool (but I had to turn that feature off to improve battery life). I customized the desktop background to some concept art of the videogame RiME. (I thought I had saved the default bg pic from my old laptop to my external hard drive, but I guess I hadn't?) Funny to me that in the 10+ years of owning my second ever laptop, I never changed the wallpaper because I liked the default art so much. Might add more art to a file and have the wallpaper rotate. I want to replay RiME again too. Love the simple gameplay and strong colors of that game.

October 4th. So much has happened in 2 weeks, it feels much longer than that. I pretty much completely switched to using my new lap top ad my main computer, transferred all the files, downloaded a bunch of open source software for writing documents, video editing, streaming and animation. Fuck you Microsoft. I shouldn't need an account to use basic microsoft word. Hope to bring back page making streams next year for patrons~ ive even been playing some steam games that my old laptop just couldn't run, and quite a few new ones as well. Candleman, carto, so many fun and charming titles~ replaying snakebird because all my progress was lost 🥲I'm not mad. I love snake bird.

I have so much desire to do so many things, but not enough time to do them. I need to queue up my november posts for tumblr before I go on break. I need to get my oil changed soon. I want to go back on steam and play more humongous entertainment games. I want to write, I want to draw, I want to animate, I want to learn how to quilt and crochet and garden. I want to do it all right now all at the same time. I want to go on a nature walk. I want to see my friends.

Its finally starting to cool off. We still get in the 90s easily, but it rained last night for the first time in weeks, and we havent hit 100 degrees in a couple of days. Been reading a lot of webtoons lately. Been having the urge to start my own with my original storylines, or at least use webtoons as a backup/mirror for my fan comic. So many unique stories there all ready. So many fun art style and worlds to get lost in. I love stories and the people that tell them. The joy of creating a tale and sharing it with the world is humanity in its purest form.

November 1st: youtube is cracking down on adblockers. Havent had any problems yet on desktop, but on this day, my default youtube app on my lg smart phone started showing me ads for the first time in the 8+ years I've had it. I was so mad that i forced stopped the app, and logged into youtube through an ad block browser app instead. Some of the app's features will be missed, like being able to watch a video and search at the same time, but these little annoyances are nothing compared to the fury I felt at being shown ads. I didn't write nearly as much as I wanted to for nanowrimo today because of this.

November 6th: I turned 31! Both my friends forgot my birthday, and I wasn't able to reserve a camping site for the April 8th eclipse next year! 🙃 ive been writing like mad for nanowrimo, but I'm still falling behind.

December 17. Has it really been a whole month since i last made a diary update? Thanksgiving came and went. No drama at our house but my mom and I watched an argument unfold in the yard of our neighbors. The one mobile game I play, dragon's world, officially shut down for me 4 days ago. I'm a little sad I could never 100% it, but glad I got as far as I did, and even managed to buy some dergs so it didnt feel all my hard earned gems went to waste. Havent uninstalled the app yet out of nostalgia, even though I only played this game for a year and a half. I made the mistake of reinstalling the google play store to look for a new dragon raising game, but none had the same appeal, and the reinstall caused my discord app to update and hate it ):< I kinda want to learn how to make a mobile game of my own like dragons world, but with gryphons instead and a focus on rescue/rehabilitation and zoology angle. (I mostly just dont like how common fighting is in these kind of games.) Finally been playing horizon forbidden west after a few months away. I'm not progressing the story, just trying to max upgrade all my gear. It's a fun challenge~

December 26, 2023. Got bit by a dog at work on Christmas. Right on the nail of my middle finger. He broke my nail but not my skin. Its odd. Thankfully I can still draw without much issue. I got a tetanus shot and flu shot just to be safe. Mom got me a tent for Christmas because I plan to go camping by myself next year, even though I wont get to see the eclipse on my outing.

The fan game undertale yellow came out on the 9th… Which was before my last journal update? I've been enjoying the game play but the story is just a little... eh. the sprite work is phenominal, though, no complaints there. I hate that it's making me want to write my own AU version of it already to "improve" it, since I think the story loses its way pretty much once you leave the ruins. (maybe I can try to shove it into Clemency in stead since i still haven't finished that either).

I watched a documentary on kangaroos on netflix this month. I had to play it at 1.25 speed because I swear they slowed down every single clip for the film to get it to a certain length. I also watched "dog gone trouble" which had terrible voice work and awful character design, and then "back to the outback" which was surprisingly well made even if the characters stumbled sometimes, but I'd easily recommend it. I want to watch more Christmas movies before the year is through. (A/N: this also did not happen).

Finally uninstalled dragons world today. My phone's been acting up. Hope I don't have to replace it soon. I don't like how, nowadays, the technology I pay for, I don't actually own, and features are being removed left and right. I'm afraid any "new" phone on the market offered now won't nearly last as long as my current one has.

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Aaand that was a brief glimpse into my year! The time is now 1:10pm! I already have one other post going up today, so I'll queue this one to go up on thursday instead~ if you managed to read this far, thank you so much, i guess! I hope my ramblings don't make you see me differently as a person. It's odd reflecting on where I was in my life over these past 12 months, remembering my state of mind and the feelings I felt as I wrote these entries. I'll be sure to do it again this year.

Overall, did I learn anything?...no, I don't think so? I did come to the realization that at the end of every year, in multiple youtube videos and tumblr posts, people mentioned how hard the year was for them, but like... after june, for me, everything improved quite a lot. it doesn't feel right to say that 2023 was hard for me. It was unbearably sad for me at the beinging. annoying and (physcially) painful half way through, but once august hit... everything slowly started to get better, despite the small petty things I complained about in my journal entries above. youtube ads, car troubles and discontinued apps of games I enjoyed still feel like small potatoes when compared to what I accomplished. Finished writing a draft of personal fiction, finished a major arc of a fan comic, got a new laptop to stream and share art with others, played a bunch of new video games, and generally enjoyed life for the latter half of this year.

And it almost feels selfish to say that... I'm happy.

I hope I can stay happy in 2024 as well.

Thanks for reading~

Have a safe and joyous 2024~

[gstdaisuki]

Part 2: A Discovery with Paul Hutchinson

In the middle of asking some questions via email, Paul discovered the source files for several modules that we had both assumed were lost. This was quite an exciting moment, so I wanted to share it separately.

the previous interview was formatted to remove the interleaved blocks of quoted text. this is presented in a more raw format, as I think that shows the discovery process better.

from anosci, Mar 11, 2024, 7:01PM

I had some more music questions.

The first two X-Men games had 33 and 45 RPM options for all of the music. Do you remember how that made it into the game? Because after hearing your tales of pirate radio and record shop digging, I feel pretty confident that this speed-select design was your idea!

Also, you previously shared the Amiga modules from X-Men 3, before the conversion to Game Gear data. I believe that X-Men 3 was your final Game Gear game. Was the "Amiga -> MIDI data" technique a new process, or did you do that for every preceding Game Gear game?

from Paul Hutchinson, Mar 11, 2024, 8:51PM

Yes, the 33/45 rpm option was my idea. :) Ed liked it. He keeps saying we should do a game together again, "before we die". And he said it should have a retro flavour, and have weird dance music in it. Maybe one day we will do that, I am up for it. (I am considering doing a Pico-8 title at some point here.)

Hmm. I don't think X-Men 3 was the only Amiga to MIDI data music I did. However, I don't remember when the cross-over was. I would have to go back and check over everything. I'll have a quick look and let you know if I actually find out, eh.

from Paul Hutchinson, Mar 11, 2024, 9:12PM

Ok, so I checked the ASM files. X-Men 1-3 all have music derived from Amiga MOD files. There is text denoting the MOD title, and names of the samples which were used in the MOD. If you are interested in more on that I can dig a bit more, and get you those names. They are samples from records I had at the time (Art Of Noise, Linx, etc.). Obviously, the Game Gear instruments were not the same sound.

from anosci, Mar 11, 2024, 10:12PM

I'm curious, at least! I'd love to hear the original MODs but I assume you were only able to find X-Men 3

from Paul Hutchinson, Mar 12, 2024, 9:04AM

Music! …

Ok, this is getting interesting. I see "babybeat" in the list of MODs used in X-Men 1. I found a playlist on YT with 10 tracks. In the menu of the game there are 8 tracks to preview. Track 10 on the playlist is 08 on the menu. Given the heartbeat type sound I hear, that is the most likely candidate for "babybeat". Obviously, since there are 10 tracks in the playlist, and there are 10 references to MOD in the code, all of the tunes in the code were used in the game. Now I am not certain about the connection of this particular tune to "Midnight (Live)" by Orbital. It could be that it is another track that I posted, because I posted quite a few. Hmm. It's what my memory says, but I could be wrong? In any case, it means that "babybeat" as a MOD was transferred from Amiga to PC. There is a chance I have it on the CD from 1999. I just need to find that, again. The MODs do sound quite different from the GG tunes, because it is samples vs sound-chip noises. I just tried to make something that sounded good enough when converted to GG format. There are no samples, for one thing, and the tempo is different. I had made some tunes on my Amiga, and then decided to present them as potential tracks for X-Men 1, and they were accepted (for subsequent X-Men titles I made tracks specifically, as denoted by the titles of the MODs). Normally, Sega would have a musician compose tracks for a game (in MIDI).

In-browser play of X-Men https://archive.org/details/gg_X-Men_1993_Sega Key 1 to start, arrow keys to navigate, and left-CTRL to play tune

Silence = 00

X-Men playlist, 10 tracks, (at 45 RPM?) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUmRxFtMhfI&list=PLw5ZGhvK7sSLqfx4HdldmkLPdFpM3pqFY Track 1 = 01 Track 4 = 02 Track 6 = 03 Track 5 = 04 Track 7 = 05 Track 3 = 06 Track 2 = 07 Track 10 = 08

So, Track 8 and Track 9 (in the playlist) are not playable via the GG menu. Hmm. Title Screen and Ending Theme. Maybe we left off the Ending Theme because it was supposed to be a reward for finishing? Unless you just get it anyway, at Game Over (I do not recall). The Title Screen theme is just there. Oh, well.

In X-Men 1 … ;MOD Title is: renaissancegg Samples = adamski2.raw ;chahihat.raw ;ahh.raw ;drum7 ;19hat ;tr909snare ;bassdeep.raw ;minor4 ;MOD Title is: babybeat Samples = shaker ;animate-bass ;aon-bongo1.raw ;GGbdrum.raw ;AoN-drm3.raw ;moog2 ;drumwack.raw ;SoSbass1.raw ;SoSstring2.raw ;SRdrm2.raw ;CHAhihat.raw ;MOD Title is: outgg Samples = drum7 ;BHbass1.raw ;BHbass2.raw ;cymbal-crash ;chahihat.raw ;crash.raw ;jb-hhmed.raw ;hypnobass.raw ;BHacid1.raw ;BHacid2.raw ;BHacid3.raw ;out_there.raw ;MOD Title is: itchgg Samples = linxvox.raw ;AoN-perc1.raw ;AoN-drm5.raw ;AoN-drm3.raw ;dancer-vox.raw ;dancer-synth1.raw ;scratch.raw ;KRAYScratch.raw ;cymbalong.raw ;hihat1 ;organ.raw ;drumanvil.raw ;MOD Title is: fishgg Samples = Freq5.raw ;crash.raw ;DT4AAdrum2.raw ;DT4AAdrum.raw ;Freq1.raw ;SBpiano2.raw ;cymbalong.raw ;model500-cymop.raw ;futuresnare2 ;wavehi.raw ;N-JOImindflux.raw ;MOD Title is: trouzgg Samples = DT4AAdrum.raw ;hihat1 ;DT4AAbass2.raw ;2U-4.raw ;hihatop1 ;DT4AA6.raw ;zoo7.raw ;where'smytrousers.raw ;zoo8.raw ;ere.raw ;yaseenem.raw ;theretheyare.raw ;MOD Title is: joygg Samples = N-JOImf1.raw ;N-JOI-5.raw ;N-JOIph1.raw ;N-JOI-2.raw ;JBdrum2.raw ;N-JOIrz1.raw ;N-JOIrz2.raw ;N-JOIrz3.raw ;jb-hhmed.raw ;MOD Title is: ramgg Samples = N-JOIph1.raw ;aon-drm5.raw ;model500-cymop.raw ;model500-cymcl.raw ;model500-clap.raw ;drumwack.raw ;2U-6.raw ;hold ;hold (offset tone) ;MOD Title is: turbogg Samples = beep1.raw ;beep2.raw ;beep3.raw ;beep4.raw ;gunshot ;2U-3.raw ;chahihat3.raw ;spliffclap2 ;snare ;stick.raw ;zoo1.raw ;2U-2.raw ;DT4AA6.raw ;MOD Title is: xravegg Samples = EBputv.raw ;JBhitme.raw ;shamen-guitar1.raw ;shamen-guitar2.raw ;SoSbass2.raw ;s&pcots.raw ;mtxpling.raw ;orch.hit ;bassdrum16 ;bassdrum7 ;breaksnareclap ;closehihat ;cymbal-crash ;tap.raw

Naming of samples … Adamski, CHA = Crown Heights Affair, AoN = Art Of Noise, BH = Bassheads, JB = James Brown, Linx (David Grant), KRAYScratch is a sample from "The Krays" film ("Stop all that scratchin', you're making me bloody itch!", "Where's my trousers?" is another sample from same, I think), N-Joi, Model 500, Shamen, SoS = S.O.S. Band, zoo = "Zoo Rave" compilation CD, 2U = 2Unlimited, DT4AA = "Don't Techno For An Answer" compilation CD

Bassheads - Is There Anybody Out There Adamski - NRG Model 500 - Sound Of Stereo

In X-Men 2 … ;MOD Title is: level1b Samples = akaiclosedhh ;bassdrum ;snare1 ;hihat-2ud2 ;808synth.raw ;amaski1.raw ;N-JOIph1.raw ;MOD Title is: level1 Samples = akaiclosedhh ;bassdrum7 ;snare1 ;hihat-2ud2 ;aon-vox6.raw ;amaski1.raw ;N-JOIph1.raw ;MOD Title is: level2 Samples = akaiclosedhh ;bassdrum7 ;snare1 ;hihat-2ud2 ;808synth.raw ;amaski1.raw ;N-JOIph1.raw ;BHacid1.raw ;MOD Title is: level3 Samples = akaiclosedhh ;bassdrum7 ;snare1 ;hihat-2ud2 ;808synth.raw ;amaski1.raw ;N-JOIph1.raw ;BHacid1.raw ;MOD Title is: level4 Samples = akaiclosedhh ;bassdrum ;snare1 ;hihat-2ud2 ;808synth.raw ;amaski1.raw ;N-JOIph1.raw ;BHacid1.raw ;MOD Title is: level5 Samples = akaiclosedhh ;bassdrum7 ;snare1 ;hihat-2ud2 ;808synth.raw ;amaski1.raw ;N-JOIph1.raw ;BHacid1.raw ;MOD Title is: level6 Samples = akaiclosedhh ;bassdrum7 ;snare1 ;hihat-2ud2 ;808synth.raw ;amaski1.raw ;N-JOIph1.raw ;BHacid1.raw ;MOD Title is: level7 Samples = akaiclosedhh ;bassdrum7 ;snare1 ;hihat-2ud2 ;808synth.raw ;amaski1.raw ;N-JOIph1.raw ;BHacid1.raw ;MOD Title is: level8 Samples = akaiclosedhh ;bassdrum7 ;snare1 ;hihat-2ud2 ;808synth.raw ;amaski1.raw ;N-JOIph1.raw ;BHacid1.raw ;MOD Title is: level9 Samples = akaiclosedhh ;bassdrum7 ;snare1 ;hihat-2ud2 ;808synth.raw ;amaski1.raw ;N-JOIph1.raw ;BHacid1.raw ;MOD Title is: level10 Samples = bassdrum28 ;animate-bass ;koto ;closedhi ;hihat-2ud2 ;snare25

In X-Men 3 … ;MOD Title is: x3l1 Samples = akaiclosedhh ;bassdrum7 ;snare1 ;hihat-2ud2 ;BHbass2.raw ;amaski1.raw ;eurostring.raw ;MOD Title is: x3l2 Samples = akaiclosedhh ;bassdrum7 ;snare1 ;hihat-2ud2 ;BHbass2.raw ;amaski1.raw ;eurostring.raw ;MOD Title is: x3l3 Samples = 909.ophi ;hip.snare ;breakdrum ;cymbal1 ;polysynth ;strings6 ;tubestring ;tricky.raw ;MOD Title is: x3l4 Samples = 909.ophi ;hip.snare ;breakdrum ;cymbal1 ;shamen-keys.raw ;tttt-bass1.raw ;goodpling ;inner ;funbass ;MOD Title is: x3l5 Samples = 909.ophi ;hip.snare ;breakdrum ;cymbal1 ;animate-bass ;sequencer ;pizza2 ;N-JOIph1.raw ;tricky.raw ;MOD Title is: x3l6 Samples = 909.ophi ;hip.snare ;breakdrum ;cymbal1 ;bassguitar.funk ;digdug ;exbells ;reflex ;MOD Title is: x3l7 Samples = 909.ophi ;hip.snare ;breakdrum ;cymbal1 ;polysynth ;strings6 ;bell11 ;digdug ;growl2 ;MOD Title is: x3l8 Samples = 909.ophi ;drum7 ;comadrum ;cymbal1 ;comasynth1 ;comasynth2 ;ex800bass ;hitbass ;MOD Title is: x3l9 Samples = 909.ophi ;hip.snare ;breakdrum ;cymbal1 ;dang ;dbassic.raw ;dbassic2.raw ;d-50.res1 ;d-50.res2 ;d-50.res3 ;d-50.res4 ;d-50.res5 ;junob3 ;sequencer ;synth1 ;MOD Title is: x3l10 Samples = 909.ophi ;hip.snare ;breakdrum ;cymbal1 ;koto07 ;bass37 ;Sample10_04 ;perco ;hitbass ;licks ;MOD Title is: x3l11 Samples = hip.snare ;breakdrum ;cymbal1 ;strings3majfl ;sinecz ;shamus ;pling ;tinewave ;synbrass

Probably more info than was necessary, eh. But I learned something! :D

from anosci, Mar 12, 2024, 4:57PM

this is interesting!

First of all, it's rare that game music has titles! They're not quite matched up with the order of the songs in the sound test, but that's still neat to know.

plus it confirms my interpretation that these were rave / dance inspired tunes!

I could believe that 08 in the sound test menu is "babybeat". It has a pretty soft melody, befitting of the title and theme, I think.

This also paints an interesting picture. Tell me if this lines up with your memories:

You had to write the music for Spiderman vs The Kingpin, so you hunkered down and used whatever tools you had.

Then when you learned you had to do the music for X-Men as well, you wanted something easier to work with, 

so you proposed converting the MODs you'd already written.

...and then you stuck with that process for the next two games

>  Unless you just get it anyway, at Game Over (I do not recall).

I checked, and you get the the (presumed?) "babybeat" track at Game Over

from Paul Hutchinson, Mar 12, 2024, 8:41PM

Yes, that's about it, as best as I can remember. I got pretty used to ProTracker.

Yes, at Game Over.

I listened to both tracks to try and compare. It's difficult, because the tempo is very different, the waveforms are very different, and the instruments are totally different. I really need to find that disc, because if I can hear my original MOD it will help clarify if my memory is correct.

from anosci, Mar 13, 2024, 12:31PM

I suppose the obvious follow-up question would be: do you remember how you wrote the tunes for Spiderman vs. The Kingpin?

from Paul Hutchinson, Mar 13, 2024, 3:07PM

Joergen Bech wrote the sound subroutines, we worked together at Inner Prise (I think he is Swedish). I am pretty sure that the music was just composed using those subroutines. As in, just typing it all up, into the assembler file. It was a bit laborious to say the least. There are no other tools to write the music. I looked at the code, and there is no mention of anything other than the code itself. Less than ideal, eh. But then, I am the type of programmer that will convert a C64 loading screen to an Amstrad loading screen, by typing in all the numbers defining each pixel (and getting it right). I did that for Druid (or Druid II, I forget which). Just brute forced it. I got Firebird to provide a print out of all the numbers for the C64 screen, and I converted them myself, and typed in the Amstrad equivalent. I think I got 250 quid for that, it was not fun, but maybe worth the cash, eh.

For Chakan, there was a composer who provided MIDI files. I wrote a conversion program to convert the MIDI into the format that the sound subroutines could use. Much easier, and I did not have to come up with the music myself.

Then for X-Men I added a MOD to MIDI converter, I think. Then ran that through the MIDI to sound subroutine format.

I am looking through the code some more ...

Breaking news ... I just found a bunch of MOD files inside the Sega > TC > Prog folder. OMG! Stand by for those ... (BabyBeat!)

from anosci, Mar 13, 2024, 6:17PM

Typing music straight into an ASM file was shockingly common back then, so I believe it.

> I just found a bunch of MOD files inside the Sega > TC > Prog folder.

!!!!

excitedly but patiently waiting to hear these!

from Paul Hutchinson, Mar 13, 2024, 7:43PM

Hallelujah! :D

Okay, we have the original pre-conversion MOD files for X-Men 1 & 2. They are not the original MOD files. These have been modified to fit the conversion process, in order to get a decent sounding composition on the Game Gear. I have removed some samples from being played, even though they are probably still included in the sample set. I have substituted some samples for others, in order to get a better result. However, you do get a decent idea of how it all worked. This might be as close as we can get, but I will keep looking, eh. I also included some MODs that were in the same folder, but are not mine. A couple from the "Jesus On E's" Amiga demo, as well as the "Coma" demo. Figured you might find them interesting too. I might have borrowed samples from those MODs to make my own.

I have to say I was quite emotional when I saw those MODs in the Turbo-C++ folder. Never expected them to be there this whole time. Hearing "Babybeat" again after all these years. Man. Thanks for getting me to look into all this, I would not have known they were there otherwise. Cheers! :)

3 attachments:

Xmen-Extras.7z

Xmen2MODs.7z

XmenMODs.7z

from anosci, Mar 13, 2024, 9:52PM

I cross-referenced the songs with the titles as they appear in smspower.com (here and here)

X-Men baby    -> Mandripoor fishgg  -> Brood Cave itchgg  -> The Savage Land joygg   -> Boss outgg   -> Morlock Tunnel ramgg   -> Game Over renaiss -> The Hellfire Club trouzgg -> Avalon turbogg -> Ending xravegg -> Title

X-Men 2 level1 -> Arctic level1b-> The Danger Room level2 -> The Hellfire Club level3 -> Genosha level4 -> Avalon level5 -> Egyptian Base Part 1 level6 -> Egyptian Base Part 2 level7 -> Stryfe's Moon Base level8 -> Boss level9 -> Ending level10-> Title

critically speaking, I think most of these start with a solid idea that then gets a bit buried. but it's an amazing piece of context. a lot of the rave timbre was lost in the gamegear conversion. it's amazing to hear it put back, so to speak!

I can see why you fondly remembered babybeat. I think that might be your strongest tune here. that and "OUTGG" (or at least, those two are my favorites)

I love seeing that you got something cool out of my barrage of questions and curiosity, too :)

digging around some more... "JOYGG" is an odd one: the pitch bends didn't transfer to the Game Gear. though I'm not sure my own playback is accurate... there's a lot of out-of-key samples that sound fine after the Game Gear conversion. Strange.

comparing babybeat to orbital's "Midnight (Live)"... the two have a similar push-pull rhythm rhythm in the bass, but I wouldn't call them the same. 

though I could easily imagine the similarities causing a fan of one song to raise their eyebrow at the other. 

from Paul Hutchinson, Mar 14, 2024, 8:26AM

Cool.

Yeah, the "missing link" MODs do not sound as good as either the originals, or the final GG version.

Oh, and I actually wrote a Pro-Tracker to GG format conversion program (DOS), no in-between conversion. I think there was, at some point, a dual set up, but I decided to make it simpler. The dual set up would have been a legacy from when I had to write a MIDI to GG format, for Chakan. I only have the final set of tools in my Turbo-C++ directory, none of the tools I used previously.

I agree with your assessment of the tune similarity. I think at some point I got it into my head they were more similar, and then that just became what I remembered. I am getting older too, so that is a factor. I am only human after all.

from anosci, Mar 14, 2024, 7:02PM

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, right? ;)

from Paul Hutchinson, Mar 14, 2024, 8:39PM

Well, I am kind of big on telling the truth, tbh. I do acknowledge that I can (and do) get things wrong though. I remember when I was a kid, I swore that the words on a TV advert were "It's full of peppery goodness", when in fact, it was "It's full of Cadbury goodness" (the ad was for Cadbury's Finger of Fudge). I really believed that was what it said, and it did not matter what everyone else said it was. I was honest about my position, I was just completely and totally wrong. :D

[dubbidubbida]

Another one

I KNOW this chart is for OCs but I had to make one for Belial.

There is severe scarcity of Belial content on Tumblr.

Elaborating on my choices below 👇

⚠️Huge wall of text incoming!!⚠️

For aesthetics, I chose a picture of someone's back with those black hand markings. I interpret it as the taking of Belial's wings (I headcanon he originally had angel wings 🪽 but were ripped off by Lucilius🤬) and I also interpret it as sexual abuse. Just think about it bro. Like almost every aspect of a primal beast is chosen by its creator, at least the prominent aspects.

Belial was made to be a seductress, which is a charming part of himself imo but the bad part about it is that during the beginning of his existence, it was also his job to be one, for who? I'm thinking for the Astrals.

My impression of the astrals so far is that they're all psychopathic dipshits, which was even confirmed in Heart of the Sun ( GBF anniversary event), that they don't see primal beasts as anything other than tools (according to Raziel). Belial had a purpose that couldn't be shared with anybody else, which was to incite a rebellion. To cover up for it, he had to have another purpose. Which was 1) being Lucifer's adjunctant, and 2) being the Astrals' sex toy.

Belial was an exquisite creation, like a demo of Lucifer (cause they both are similar regarding power). And of course, a primal beast needs to be approved by the council of astrals before usage. Lucilius could've proposed both the functions of being Lucifer's adjunctant and tracking machine, and to make it more appealing, a toy with endless stamina that won't break after being used 😂👎👎 (I imagine the astrals like Greek gods who plucked humans and 'used' them, given their sadistic nature). So Belial, both visually appealing and with an alluring personality, would be the perfect unbreakable toy. A tool and a toy, 2 in 1! Approved!! Awful. A toy who won't fight back, a toy who can't say no, a toy who won't break... ughhh. Primal beasts are obviously sentient, despite their inability to reach human complexity. He was literally built to be unable to connect with others, to be sincere, or to just live a normal life like the other archangels have adapted to. That's cruel 😭

So yeah, I don't care if Belial was made to enjoy what they do to him no matter what, I still consider it sexual abuse because Belial is sentient.

Lmao ok that was for aesthetic picture #1 ☠️ Let's proceed with the rest. For the second aesthetic picture, I selected a white snake wrapped around an arm. The snake represents Belial, the serpent. And the arm represents Lucilius. If you're familiar with WMTSB, you are well aware of how tightly Belial is wrapped around Lucilius' finger, and only hangs on tighter and tighter to the man who named him "worthless" lol. (One of the meanings of "Belial" is worthless).

And the third aesthetic picture I've chosen is that of a snake in applussy. The image represents temptation and lust. Pretty much it. You know the drill, Belial serpent, and the apple of temptation.

Now, we have the favorites. By favorites, it means: favorite color, favorite movie/show, and favorite animal.

For his favorite color, I just went with purple cause that's one of his main colors. It's just a headcanon. He changed his white, gold, and red uniform for a black and purple one. He must like purple🤷‍♀️

Next, favorite movie, I didn't know honestly. But he strikes me as someone who'd like the absurdity of 1980s horror films. So I chose the Shining. Maybe he'd like it.

And for his favorite animal, I think he'd like cats. They probably remind him of Cilius. Same gaze, same personalities, meow. And it's just cute to imagine him with cats. 🐈‍⬛

Character inspirations. LMAO. So the first one is that dude Lucifel from El Shaddai. Let's face it, Belial is that guy but with a huge feather boa and huge tits chest and meaty thighs. Massive upgrade tbh

Next up is obviously, Belial the demon. I just put that cuz yk, the name. No need for more explanation.

Then there's the snake of Eden. Belial is the serpent luring others to take a bite out of the apple 🍎 we know this.

The songs are more like what I think of him rather than what I believe applies to him. But at the same time most of those apply to him imo. I don't needa explain just check out the songs yourself, you might like some😁 And that's it.

And finally, there's Lucifer. I know Satan was the snake as well but I'm separating them for the sake of interpretation. By that I mean, Belial is both the serpent and the fallen angel. If you know what I'm saying.

💕Thanks to everyone who read this wall of text💕

[iviarellereads]

Wheel of Time full series spoiler thoughts on EOTW 29-38

A probably semi-regular weekly bonus to my reread blog, since sometimes you realize things on reread that just make you need to yell in a full spoiler space.

It's really fun to look back at the stedding as, oh, this is literally a little piece of another dimension. It might've grown the local seeds and supported the local animals, but it is obviously disconnected from the local reality, to block the One Power and all.

So many references to Hawkwing sending armies across the sea, and yet nobody really believes it, or expects the Return.

The farmer gave Rand the dark, plain scarf… and then Rand wears it around his mouth… almost like a… black veil on this Aielman… OK that's a bit too much ellipsis for me to keep going but I had to squint and see if the words really meant what I thought they did.

In Play For Your Supper, one of the songs Rand names is "Coming Home From Tarwin's Gap", now how would a name like that have made it as far as the 2 Rivs?

Rand starts having little thoughts on the road that he can't quite track the source of. "Too late now." in Four Kings, for example. LTT starting to slip in. Or the taint madness, if you prefer that explanation for the hallucinations. Either way.

Ishy treating oblivion as a reward. Cute.

I feel kinda sneaky putting Mili Skane's name down in ch 33. It's kind of a spoiler, we're not told it, but I like tagging the characters that appear, for future searchability. If she ALSO appears later in the series, well, I wasn't lying about the Companion entry.

Almen Bunt reminded me that Elayne's kids could have a stronger claim to the throne than she did, because of the bloodliney shit Andoran nobles use to measure their kin-distance from the first queen, but only if everyone involved admitted Rand's lineage publicly. And, only because it was Rand's body that she conceived with.

Which gets me on to how weird and icky the Moridin body swap is, because besides everything else, we don't talk enough about how the Dark One resurrected Ishy as Moridin into somebody else's corpse, that body's original soul had his own family and life, and first the DO took it to punish Ishy with continued existence, and THEN Moridin and Rand swapped balefires and then bodies so Rand's in some completely random dude's face and genes.

(I only had about 5.5 hours of sleep last night as I write this, can you tell?)

At any rate, EOTW 34 cracks things wide open for any show-firstie who looks at the X-Ray feature or the episode credits. Episode 1x07 lists Tigraine Mantear instead of Shaiel, so when the first season was finished, seeing so many people go back and start reading the books and be like, well hold on now… That was precious and priceless to witness.

“The Queen is wed to the land,” Thom said as brightly colored balls danced in a circle, “but the Dragon . . . the Dragon is one with the land, and the land is one with the Dragon.” For this to appear here, with Almen Bunt, when his next appearance is just after Zen Rand emerges and the Dragon is one enough with the land to offer a bounty of apples from the orchard on Bunt's sister's farm… Same chapter, same day, still sleep deprived, and I need a moment to just sit in this feeling of beautiful symmetry.

No doubt I'll come back to it when the quote comes up, but: Thom was twice Morgase's age when they were together. Given the dates we have as long as the Fandom.wiki is properly sourced because I don't want to go doing extra digging in the Companion and stuff, that means that 14 years ago, Morgase was 27 and Thom somewhere in the 50-60 range, 55 being a solid guess, putting her at 41 and him at 68 around the start of the series. I'm still very, very glad the show agreed with me that there was no need of him being so old, especially when his love interests skew so young, Mo being the exception but she still looks young.

So much of chapter 36 is just "yep, setup." I daren't even start listing or we'll be here all day and this post will be much longer than I try to keep them, even for two-weekers when the first week's not quite long enough to justify a post. But the one that gets me is Rand finding it funny, the idea of him wanting to be a king, when he will end up the de facto ruler of a decent chunk of the Westlands.

37 and 38 do little in the way of setup but to continue setting up just how much Byar's gonna nurse that grudge for the next 12 books or two years. Well, that and finally showing Perrin's golden eyes. Mo asks if this was foretold, and well, we know it was… just not in a prophecy she'd have seen. Verin has, though.

I will say, I prefer how Egg and Perrin rescued themselves in the show, even if the wolf stuff maybe could have been moved forward into season 1 to make it make a little more sense to show-onlys.

And, do we think Mo was Warder-compelling Lan not to go after Nyn? Or just reminding him that it's out of character and out of keeping with his guiding principles? I'd like to think Mo treats Lan better, BUT she does hand off his bond to Myrelle without telling him later soooo…

[dragons-and-dwarves-are-nice]

To the Shadows that Cry Witch /// Chapter 11

Hello!! I know it's been less than a month, but it feels like I haven't posted a chapter in forever! As much as I've enjoyed this small hiatus, it's definitely given me the motivation to start writing again. Now, as for the first chapter of Part 2, Chapter 11 includes an introduction of one of my own OCs, who's name you will find out below and I can't wait for you to meet him! Enjoy! <3

Summary: Magic was real, but it came at a price. So when two girls end up in the one place they never thought they could reach, strange things began to happen. Good or bad? That's up to them to find out.

Tags: Kíli x oc/reader - Fíli x oc (POV to be written soon) - Thorin's company x ocs/reader (platonic) - fluff - angst - EXTREME slow burn - crack - Bagginshield

Word Count: 2355

Warnings: Mentions of Minor and Major Injuries from last chapter.

Taglist - comment or message to be added!

PLEASE START FROM THE BEGINNING IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY OK LOVE U

Want some background music? Check out my Soundtrack Playlist!

Now available on Wattpad and AO3 (please let me know if links aren't working)

< Part 1 // Chapter 11 // Chapter 12 >

PART 2: Chapter 11 -

Unfortunate Beginnings

Anodyne (Definition): Capable of soothing or easing pain. (Figuratively) soothing or relaxing. (Adjective / Origin: Derived from the Greek/Latin word anṓdynos/ an·​o·​dyne ˈa-nə-ˌdīn)

Hobbiton, The Shire – T.A. Sunday 25th September 2939 of the Third Age (1339 in Shire-reckoning)

The moment Bilbo’s footsteps faded away, Kay was immediately upon me as she whipped around in her chair and I could see the question she had wanted to ask earlier burn in her eyes.

“Why’d you ask for his name?” she practically blurted out.

“Because we don’t know him.” I stated. Kay’s brows furrowed in confusion.

“But we do? Don’t we?”

“From the book and movies, yes,” I began explaining, “But we don’t actually know him, we just know of him. Plus if we called him by his name without asking for it first, I’m pretty sure he would be given enough heebie jeebies to throw us out. Then we would really have no place to go.”

Kay nodded slowly in agreement, before responding. “I mean, we do know of other places to stay.”

“But, would we actually get there alive, let alone know how to get there?” I questioned rhetorically.

Kay slumped back in her chair disappointedly with a groan at the obvious truth. We were raised and conditioned to live in a – somewhat – sheltered society. We hadn’t had a single lesson in life on how to survive out in the uncharted wild, apart from the occasional Bear Grylls show that I couldn’t remember anything from, except that thing where you drink your own urine, but I would honestly die on the first day of thirst than go anywhere near my piss. Soon Kay pulled me out of my spiralling thoughts as she pushed herself out her chair and I twisted my head to watch as she passed me.

“Oi.” I said, reaching out to prod at her arm. “Bilbo said to stay put.”

“He also said help yourself to tea.” She fired back as she made her way to the kitchen. “And I have two working ankles.”

It was now my turn to slump back in my own chair with a huff. A bit bored, I stretched my legs towards the fireplace in an attempt to warm my feet as I listened to Kay’s footsteps as she pottered around. You couldn’t let her be too sure of herself whilst she walked around with a knocked head after all. The clinks of ceramics became clearer as she wandered back through, balancing everything on the ornate wooden tray in her hands. She plopped it onto the small table that sat in between our armchairs before settling herself back into her chair.

Swatting my outstretched legs away from the fire whilst muttering something about my lack of fire safety, she passed me my cup of steaming tea, before picking up her own. Facing towards the open window, where the sun and many sounds of the morning wandered through, her expressions shifted as thoughts floated around in her head.

“Where do you suppose he’s gone?” She pondered as her eyes wandered about.

“Some sort of healer maybe?” I suggested, taking a sip of tea. “He did seem to panic over our whole ‘We’re severely injured!’ ordeal at the end of breakfast.”

“Huh, maybe.”

We sat in a peaceful silence for a bit as we waited for Bilbo’s return. Though whilst I stared at the crackling fire, an unwanted thought came to mind.

“Wait, so.. how are we gonna repay him in this condition?” I said worriedly. Kay joined me in staring at the fire as she tried to think of something. “I just don’t want to be kicked out for not being able to do anything meaningful.” I added.

“Eugh, you’re right.” Kay replied with a slight panic in her eye as she looked away from the flames at me. She took a moment as she thought of her next words. “Though I’ve read the hobbit enough times to know he’s surely not like that. We’ll explain that whilst we’re healing, we’ll start with smaller things, then the better we get, the bigger tasks we take on.”

I took a deep breath as I nodded, drinking more tea to distract myself from overthinking.

Moments passed before the second stretch of silence was interrupted. The muffled sounds of voices getting closer to the front door increased, one voice sounding familiar but frantic, whilst the other one unfamiliar and annoyed. We both leant over our armchairs to fixate on the circular door as it swung open, and we both watched as a now tussled up Bilbo quickly ushered in another hobbit. This other hobbit looked as if he had been dragged out of bed then through a bush backwards by his pointy ears as he stumbled in with bleary eyes. Poor guy was nodding almost subconsciously at the words that were pouring out of Bilbo’s mouth as he rubbed at his eyes in an attempt to be rid of his tiredness. He slipped off the coat that was already askew on his shoulders, before haphazardly patting down his unsightly bedhead of mousy brown hair as he turned away from his now hung up coat to follow Bilbo deeper into the house.

“Now Master Baggins,” The stranger managed out whilst stifling another yawn. “Let us see what caused you to wake me up at the crack of dawn, on a Sunday might I add.”

“Yes, yes, through here.” Bilbo said almost dismissively as he strode up to where we were sitting, beckoning the other hobbit over. I spotted the relief on his face as he saw that we hadn’t really moved at all from where he had left us. As for the second hobbit, his tiredness was snatched away from him in an instant as his half lidded eyes landed on us, and he almost stumbled back in shock at the sight of us, his hand clutched over his heart.

“By Yavanna! Where in Middle Earth did they come from?!” He cried as his wide chestnut eyes scoured over our appearance. We recoiled slightly at his outcry, eyeing each other concerned. Surely we didn’t look that bad?

“Fell straight from the top of the hill, they did.” Bilbo began explaining, , (Ok, maybe we did look that bad) stuffing his hands in his pockets as he swung back and forth on his heels. The other hobbit faced him with a gaping mouth at Bilbo’s casualness, before turning towards us.

“And you’re still alive?!?” he gasped incredulously. I shrugged whilst Kay gestured at herself with a ‘guess so!’ look on her face. He faced back to Bilbo, “And what in Yavanna’s name made you make the decision to bring two unknown big folk into your home???”

“That’s what I was saying!” Kay muttered to herself, though the two hobbits were too busy squabbling to notice.

“They mean no harm to any of us. No weapons or anything malevolent in their packs. From what they’ve told me, they simply got lost in the woods and never found the way out.” Bilbo stated, his tone indicating that this was his final decision. “And they’ve given no reason for me to have them leave. Nothing but impeccable manners.”

We both eyed each other confusedly at Bilbo’s sudden defensiveness, then all three of us watched as the second hobbit’s mouth bobbed open and shut, unable to form the words. Bilbo looked between him and us for a moment before letting out a frustrated sigh. Gesturing towards us with a firm hand, he glared at the unnamed hobbit expectantly. Looking rather panicked for a second, Mr No-Name brought his eyes back on us. He then straightened up, nervously digging his thumbs into his belt loops as he began to speak.

“I errrr – Good morning.” He managed out and we both smiled politely as he spoke, which seemed to relax him slightly. “I’m Erard Noakesburrow, Hobbiton’s doctor, and uh – my good friend Bilbo here, told me that you both had quite the night!. And he’s certainly not exaggerating, from what I can see.” He said whilst mostly eyeing the bruises and cuts that were scattered around on the both of us.

“You’re not wrong.” I replied jokingly. “I’m pretty sure everything’s broken.”

Erard huffed a light laugh at my half-joke, giving us both a weak smile back that emphasised the freckles dotted on his face. Luckily he seemed to be calming down from his original panic.

“Right,” He said, lightly patting his legs to rid of the rest of his nerves. He turned back to Bilbo who was looking back expectantly. “I guess I’ll go and get what I need to examine them both. Then we can go on about the healing process.” He explained. “I take it they need a place to rest?” He asked Bilbo.

“There’s no need!” Exclaimed Bilbo, causing Erard to blink at him in surprise. “They’ll be.. staying here.”

Erard eyed us both slightly, then back at Bilbo.

“Allllright then, if you insist Master Baggins! Saves me the hassle!” He said as he turned towards the door. “I’ll go get my stuff.”

Kay and I both looked at each other questionably at Bilbo’s insistence. He was a hobbit, and I’ve read many times that hobbits do love having guests, but surely he wouldn’t be this eager to let two strangers he just met (officially) this morning?

We watched as Bilbo waved Erard out the door, nodding at whatever the doctor was saying as he walked away, before pushing it shut and heading back over to us. Bilbo went to say something, but I quickly interrupted as to not forget what I wanted to say.

“Are you sure you want us here?” I questioned. Bilbo blinked at me in confusion. “I mean, you don’t actually know us and you seem very sure about letting us stay.”

“Well I – I’m not too sure, actually.” He said uncertainly. “It’s true that I don’t know you both, in fact the only thing I know are your names.” He uttered half a word, before quickly changing course,” But you should know! Us hobbits truly love having guests – and to send you away, seeing the state you both are in, it would be very cruel to do so!” He finished with a nervous laugh.

My eyes drifted to the ground as my thoughts darted around to try and guess what Bilbo would have said, but the answers were too far out of reach right now, so I simply nodded at him. He gave a strained smile before disappearing off into the kitchen, muttering something about another kettle of tea. Kay and I instantly had a silent conversation, the both of us mouthing questions and gesturing our confusion at each other. It was somewhat unusual for Bilbo to let us stay and despite our uncertainty, it wasn’t like we were complaining.

Finally, Erard had returned with his bag. Placing it on the floor near us, he knelt down to take out what he needed and placed it on the table next to the fresh tea Bilbo had brought in. I leant forward to take a look at what he had. Most of it looked like traditional doctors equipment. I identified a stethoscope, but I’m not a doctor, so everything else I couldn’t put a name to.

“Okay, why don’t we start with what you know.” He said.

Just like we had done with Bilbo over the dining table, we listed off everything we knew. With each injury, we watched as Erard’s face became more and more concerned, and by the time we had finished, he was quite pale.

“I.. – I’ve got to say,” he huffed, his cheeks puffing out as he took a deep inhale. “It’s a miracle that you’re both here.”

Everyone had grim looks on their faces as he said this, reality setting in as Kay and I both realised how lucky we were to survive (and land in Middle Earth of course).

As respectfully as he could, Erard gently examined my ribcage, lightly pressing his small fingers down to identify which areas were broken. As for Kay, no torch lights were available in this dimension, so he used his finger for her eyes to follow to check on her head injury, confirming that she indeed had a concussion, but to add to our growing list of luck, it was only minor. Like he did with me, he used his fingers to see where Kay had injured her back as well. Standing back up, he brushed off his trousers and retrieved a book from his bag. He asked to borrow a quill and ink, which Bilbo quickly rushed off to get. He spoke as we waited.

“From what I have examined from the both of you, it’s not looking good.” He said a bit solemnly and we looked up at him with worried faces. “Though, it’s not the most terrible, either.” At this point Bilbo had walked back in and wordlessly handed him the quill and small bottle of ink. Erard thanked him with a nod and began writing in his book as he spoke again. “Everything I’ve observed will heal on its own, though it will take a while. Bed rest with short spurts of gentle exercise will ensure that you stay healthy. You – ” he pointed the quill at me, “ – will need a sling for that wrist of yours, but your ribs and ankle should heal as long as you’re gentle with those areas. And you – ” the quill darted in Kay’s direction, “don’t lift anything heavy for a while, otherwise you’ll worsen the strain on your spine.”

The two of us nodded obediently at his words and he snapped his book shut, satisfied. After repacking his bag, he beckoned Bilbo over to the front door for a private conversation. We carried on drinking our teas as we tried to tune in to the unintelligible murmuring going on down the hallway. Eventually the front door opened and we both leant over our chairs again to call out our thanks and wave goodbye. Erard raised his hand in response as he slipped on his coat, sending a warm smile in our direction before he turned. Giving Bilbo a nod – most likely to do with what they conversed about privately – he picked up his bag and stepped out, leaving Bilbo to push the door shut behind him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I hope you enjoyed meeting Erard! I'm going to create a character sheet of him soon, so look out for that <3

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Coffee Shop Rules- Part 2

Ok I’m back! This is definitly going to be longer than one part lol. I’m already getting attached to them, whoops. Anyway, I’m excited for you all to read this, and I’m making a slightttt change to the original, only because I hadn’t planned for this to be multiple parts. Don’t worry, it’s only about Lysandra dating Aedion, which I’m erasing lol. (for now). In terms of Aedion, we have no Aedion.

anyway. Have fun with this chapter, and I hope to get more to you soon before my week in New York where I will be MIA fr. Ok I’ll stop rambling. All my love- Magee

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3000 Words

TW: Cursing, mentions of domestic violence

Coffee Shop Rules

Rowan was in a shitty mood. He knew that, and yet, he turned into Fenrys and Connell’s driveway. He was only going to this party because he knew they were all going to be loose in the world come two months, and Aelin and his mother had teamed up to drove on and on about “savoring time together”. It had given him enough heartache at the thought of leaving his poor mother alone when he left for college, adding his friends to the mix was too much. 

So he was going to this stupid party, bringing stupid beer. Rowan ran his hands over his face, tired. It had been a rough few days.

His father had died when he was three. He didn’t even remember him that much. But his parents had been maddeningly in love- so much so that his mother never even wanted to get back out there, even fifteen years after the fact. This all boiled down to his father’s anniversary being a rough day for his family. He’d bought his mom flowers, they’d planned to bake, he planned to pretend it didn’t bother him that much. Same as every year.

But when he and his mom were going to leave for the cemetery, he’d gotten a call from Aelin. She’d known what day it was. She wouldn’t have called if something hadn’t happened. And an oily feeling had swarmed in his gut. 

As soon as he picked up, all he’d heard was breathing. Shallow, watery breathing. He had said her name, probably a couple of times, but in retrospect, it was all very blurry. She hadn’t responded at first, just more of that shallow breathing. His heart had nearly fucking caved in on itself before she finally answered. His mother’s sad, tired eyes had gone wide, waiting both for his attention and to know what was going on.

But Aelin had said, “I should’ve called. I’m sorry.” Her voice was muffled. She wasn’t talking quite right. 

“What’s wrong?” He’d asked.

It took a long time before she said, “My nose. I think it’s broken.”

So instead of the cemetery, putting flowers on his father’s grave, he and his mother had spent the second part of their afternoon in the emergency room, where they set Aelin’s nose right. She had insisted that he go, that she’d done enough damage by ruining their day. 

His mother, with her perfect, caring heart, only waved it off. Rowan wasn’t sure if his mother believed Aelin when she’d said she’d tripped. His mother had only asked her if her guardians were home, and Aelin had said he was out- it was all Sage Whitethorn needed before telling him to make for the emergency room, that they’d take her themselves.

Rowan knew that Aelin was lying, knew that he couldn’t tell, but still felt worthless. He couldn’t be with his mother on her hardest day, couldn’t help Aelin, because if they reported Arobynn she’d be moved across the state, again, far away from him.

Three months. Three months until she was eighteen. And then it was over. 

Now, Rowan rested his head against the steering wheel of his old red truck. He was so tired of it. Tired of the excuses, tired of not being able to help. Tired of working so that one day, he and Aelin could get that apartment they’d always talked about. Tired of the things he’d started thinking about when he thought of his best friend. His brain was too full. 

A loud bang on his side door had him startling, and he glanced out of it to see Lorcan. He was staring at him like he was crazy. Rowan shut off the engine, and popped his door open.

“What?” Rowan said at his friend’s expression.

Lorcan, with his dark features and deep voice, was the epitome of gruff when he asked, “what’s wrong with you?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Rowan answered honestly. 

Lorcan had taken the beer right out of his hands as they made their way towards the door. Rowan snorted as they approached the farmhouse, deep in the bellies of their farmland town. Music was already drifting from the open windows. 

“Thursday?” Lorcan inquired. He was a man of few words. It made him a shit therapist, but a good listener. 

Rowan shrugged. “Yeah, kinda. It’s complicated.” Technically, it wasn’t a lie. Lorcan, knowing the day, just nodded, not bringing it up again. He needed the balance between Aelin- who he would spill his guts to even if it left him feeling deflated… and Lorcan, who could just get it, and nod.

“Party people!” Shouted their blonde host from the kitchen. Rowan and Lorcan shared a look. They enjoyed their alcohol, and they enjoyed good music- but they were probably the least “party” of all the people in this house. Which seemed to be literally every single one of their friends.

Manon and Dorian were already sharing DNA on the couch, Manon waving a hand to them without even looking, too caught up on Dorian’s lap.

Lorcan made a face, even though they were all used to their antics, though he and Elide weren’t much better. Rowan figured the face was probably due to the weird history between Lorcan’s girlfriend and Manon. Aelin had sworn him to secrecy when she’d told him that Manon and Elide were a thing their freshman year and Manon’s junior. Manon and Lorcan being the same age had always made Rowan feel strange, though, and it was all really none of his business.

He liked to call Aelin a busybody, but she only called herself a “journalist”. Rowan had laughed, even if he flicked her after, saying that writing everything down in her diary didn’t qualify her as a “journalist”. 

Rowan waved to Chaol, Yrene, and Sartaq by the backdoor. He was glad that Chaol had fallen completely head over heels for Yrene after he and Aelin’s break-up. So much so that it had resulted in an accidental teenage pregnancy… but they were happy. Where their baby was on this random Saturday night, he had no idea- Rowan stopped himself. It wasn’t really his problem. Aelin was infecting his mind. Rowan had no space in his brain for other people’s drama. Where was Aelin?

He spotted Lysandra out by the firepit with her boyfriend- or was it ex-boyfriend this week?- who looked very… close. Rowan chose the kitchen instead, still looking.

Elide was sitting up on the counter of the white house, her heels digging into the old, wooden counters as she talked to Fenrys. At that height, she was level with her boyfriend for probably the first time in their relationship. She gave him a chaste kiss, then moved to lean her elbow on his shoulder. 

Lorcan handed her one of Rowan’s beers, but Rowan’s hand was suddenly filled with a sugary, pink concoction. He lifted a brow at Fenrys, who was already padding around the giant kitchen, beginning to make another one. 

“What the hell is this?”

Fenrys shrugged. “It’s Aelin’s,” he said, before he turned around. His blonde brows furrowed. “Where is your girlfriend?”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Rowan responded, voice dark. He knew Fenrys was just messing with him, but he was still a dumbass. Fenrys just shrugged, and it made Rowan want to strangle him. He was always so flippant with his words. Rowan frowned down at the drink. “Why did you give this to me?”

Suddenly, the drink was pulled from his hands. “Because he’d know I’d need it.”

Rowan spun to where Aelin stood, looking perfect, as always. She wore a short golden sundress that made her look absolutely stunning. Rowan was actually starting to get uncomfortable with how good he thought she looked. Thankfully, Fenrys drew him out of his thoughts with a laugh.

“Gods, Ace, what’d you do to your face?” Elide reached over and punched his shoulder, her dark eyes assessing.

Rowan’s body tensed, but Aelin’s felt completely liquid as she leaned slightly into his side, already sipping on her fruity drink. “Clumsy me. As always.”

He knew everyone could see the little angry line across the bridge of her nose, but both Lorcan and Fenrys seemed to accept her answer. Elide’s eyes were still cut into little slits, watching Aelin closely. Rowan hated that Aelin refused to tell their closest friends, but he knew that she didn’t want to risk one of them getting emotional and reporting Arobynn or something. 

Honestly, with that logic, he was surprised she ever told him- Rowan could barely wake up without the thought crossing his mind anymore. But Aelin wanted her friends- her family. She hadn’t had a family since she was a very little girl, and she needed their support for the many hours that she wasn’t at that house.

But her lie had him feeling protective, and he slipped his arm around her. Aelin offered him her drink but he just squinted at it. “Is that a joke?”

She poked his cheek. “Party-pooper.”

Rowan batted her hand away, and they fake fought with their hands before Fenrys’ snort had him pausing.

“What?” Rowan asked.

The blonde looked between them. “Nothing.” Rowan only glared at his long time friend. 

“How’s work?” Elide offered. She was too perceptive for her own good, and Rowan didn’t want to admit that he knew she was saving him. 

“Same old same old,” Aelin drawed. “Ugh, except for this absolute douche the other day. Do you remember that?”

Did he remember it? Rowan hadn’t stopped replaying that whole afternoon in the week since it had happened. Aelin hadn’t mentioned anything weird after, hadn’t acted any different, all through their shift and when he dropped her off home. Again- their boundaries were always a little shifty, but they’d only ever kissed for long, long goodbyes- like when he went to camp last fall break and was gone for two whole weeks. And yeah, it was all just those tiny pecks, more for closeness than anything but… it was just kinda out of nowhere. Or at least he thought so. Maybe he’d thought about it so much that his memory was now warped. 

“Ro?”

When he blinked, he realized Lorcan, Elide, Fenrys, Aelin and… Nesryn and Nehemia were all staring at him. He hadn’t even seen the girls come in. How long had he been zoning out?

“What?” 

Aelin was giving him a weird look, but pasted on that signature smile for their friends. “I asked you if you remember that guy from the other day?”

Rowan shook himself out of his thoughts, and casually said, “How could I forget? You made a your mom joke to him.”

Aelin, at that, cracked what he knew was a real smile. She laughed, her head tilting back, and he just watched her. That was normal, right? 

“No!” Elide laughed with her.

“I totally did!” Aelin then went into the whole story, but Rowan was transfixed with watching her talk. He didn’t know how she did it, how she could laugh and smile with their friends after experiencing what she did every day. When something happened to him, he shut down. Radio silence. Aelin would never ask him to explain himself, though. She would just crawl on the couch and tuck her arms around his waist, holding him until he spoke.

Rowan wondered if he was ever able to give her a fraction of the comfort she gave him. He glanced at her, so lively as she told her story, watching for any glimpse of pain. Rowan didn’t know how she hid it so well.

-

Aelin was buzzed. She knew she was buzzed. But she couldn’t help it- it had been a shit week, shit last two days, and she needed to forget. She was squinting as Chaol was talking about his son, and she found herself without a filter, just responding with, “it’s so fucking weird.”

He’d given her that look, the one where he was trying really hard not to be judgy, but was pretty much failing. He asked, “what’s weird?”

“You have a kid!” She yelled back, before placing her chin back in her hand. “You’re like… a person. Like a real life human.”

Chaol actually laughed at that, and he told her himself that she was drunk. She’d just smiled, feeling dreamy. Her mind was racing, bouncing between the strangeness of her longtime friend and ex having a real, human baby, and the niggling idea that she should be somewhere else. She felt like that a lot, though. Like even when she was happy, she should be spending her time better, doing something more worthy of her time.

She was also contemplating if she could use a third (fourth?) of these pink drinks. Rowan had gone in to grab her water a few minutes ago, claiming that if her head was tilting at that far of an angle, she could probably use some sobering up.

Chaol was talking to Dorian then, who’d finally taken a break from Manon. Aelin was fairly certain the blonde was chatting up Elide, which she found weird. Aelin’s sober mind knew that it was hypocritical, as she was talking to Chaol, but that was different. She didn’t know why, but it just… was.

“What’s with the frown, Ace?” Lysandra said, coming to sit on the edge of her lawnchair. The fire was blazing, and Aelin’s fuzzy vision swam in it. When Aelin turned to look at her, Lysandra gasped and grabbed her chin. “Gods, how’d you get that?”

Aelin frowned and turned her head out of Lysandra’s hand. “Lemme go,” she pouted.

“Uh oh,” Chaol smiled. “It’s someone’s bedtime.”

“Is not,” Aelin said, crossing her arms.

Dorian just laughed, nudging Chaol. “She’s getting defensive, too. Where’s Rowan? He can go and tuck her in.”

“It’s not my bedtime!” She yelled, even though she knew she was acting like a toddler. Gods, maybe she was drunker than she thought. It occurred to her that that probably wasn’t a great thing. She had work in the morning

“Why are you sad, Ace?” Lysandra asked, speaking low. Aelin leaned into her touch, no better than a housecat. She couldn’t help it, though. She needed a motherly touch. Maybe she’d call out for Yrene.

“Rowan won’t tuck me in,” she said. “At least not at my house.” her words were muffled in Lysandra’s lap. 

Her friend laughed, running her fingers through her cropped hair. They were all saying something, probably talking about her, but she was too tired to argue. She only heard Lysandra say, close to her ear, “are you sure you’re saying everything you mean to?”

She didn’t answer, didn’t know how long she stayed draped over Lysandra’s lap, near-asleep.

“Bedtime?”

She heard Rowan’s voice, deep and gruff. She smiled into Lysandra’s warm, soft legs. Aelin reminded herself to steal her friend’s moisturizer. 

“I’m not tired,” she muffled. 

Lysandra was messing with Aelin’s hair, stroking and braiding. Rowan was speaking lowly to her friend, but it was all so soothing until- 

“Aelin!” 

Suddenly, there was a sharp pain between her neck and her head. And then everything moved so fast, it felt like people were crowding, and she was starting to sit up, even though her drink had her feeling very dizzy. Her vision swarmed, but she felt Rowan’s warm hand on her shoulder.

Lysandra asked, “What happened to you, Ace?”

Fuck. Aelin didn’t think anyone would be digging around her skull tonight. Fuck fuck fuck. She felt literally blurry, but she forced herself to stand. Yeah, she was a lot drunker than she thought. Rowan was holding her to him, and she hated that she was swaying. Hated that she couldn’t depend on herself, hated that he wasn’t demanding to know what happened either. He was always so quiet, so patient. It used to bug her, and now, she was just envious.

“Gods, should you even be drinking with a mark like that?” 

“Should I get Yrene?”

Aelin held out her hands, acting far more sober than she was. “Look, I am fine.” All of her friends, standing around the fire, were looking very doubtful. “You do not need to get our resident nurse. Ok?”

Dorian frowned at her, and she blinked over and over again to actually make him out. “So how’d you get that bump on your head?”

Aelin fought the urge to reach for it, tracing the bulging hurt there. “I fell, ok? I was cleaning and I was… indulging, and I fell. Hit my head on my dresser.” That wasn’t a total lie. Her head did hit her dresser…

“And your nose?” Chaol asked. He’d always been all careful and protective, but now that he was a father, gods he was becoming insufferable with it.

“I’m fine. That one was a sober accident,” she joked. Aelin ignored the way Rowan held her tighter to him. 

Suddenly, the sound of the sliding glass door interrupted their silence. Fenrys’ voice rained out, loud, joking, “Damn, did I just walk into an intervention?”

All of her friends turned and glared at him. She turned, feeling a bit like she was in slow motion, to glare at him herself. She didn’t like that they were about two more incidents away from this party moving in that direction. Aelin cursed herself for not choosing another lie. 

Fenrys held up his hands at their expressions, then turned on his heel and went back inside. 

They were all looking at her again, but she only turned her head up to Rowan. “Can you take me home?”

A muscle in his jaw twitched, and she couldn’t exactly decipher the look in his eyes. But he nodded, once. She didn’t like how stony his demeanor was, so she circled in his arms, reaching up to hold his face. His green eyes were thoughtful and sad. 

She hoped he understood that she was sorry she didn’t tell him, that it was just getting… embarrassing. She didn’t want to start every shift with an update of what new part of her body was aching. 

Rowan stared at her a moment more, before saying, “let’s go.”

She was never more grateful for the safety she found in him- in his truck and his driving- than she did then, when she could just close her eyes against the seat, ignore the dull pain from where her head had been tossed against her dresser, and drift off to sleep. 

Ok there it is. Hope you don’t kill me. more churning in my brain, so hopefully more to come!

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